They also have a PV advantage (2000 proved that). Let's just assume they win the Electoral College 270-268, okay? That would mean they lose FL, OH, IA, CO and NC. I have a hard time seeing the GOP win the popular vote while losing Virginia. The Democrats get huge margins in the big states like CA and NY, while the Republicans win their big states FL, NC and GA much less decisively. Also, small states like WY and ND are overrepresented in the EC. In 2000, almost everyone talked about how the Dems had the Electoral College advantage and how Bush could win the PV while losing EV, and well... you know what happened. It happened for the same reasons I mentioned.
Except that it's not 2000 anymore. Several fairly close Bush states (CO, VA, NV, and NH) have trended Democratic since 2000, as have several Gore states (OR, NM, WA, etc.) While some Bush states have trended Republican (MO, AR, WV, and TN), there really aren't any Gore states which have trended Republican since 2000, except maybe PA. If you add up the 2012 Obama states which were more Democratic than the popular vote, you get 285. VA was very close to the popular vote, which is why you hear about the "272 firewall". Of course, some of those states aren't safe bets for the Democrats this year, but if the popular vote were a near tie, you'd expect those states to go Democratic. And if one of them, like IA, ends up more Republican than the nation as a whole in 2016, that means other states, like OH and VA, will have to shift as well.
At this point, if there is an EC/PV split (which I doubt will happen), it's more likely that the Democrat will win the EC while losing the PV.
