Hillary Clinton will beat Donald Trump, 303 electoral votes to 235, if strategic consultant Reid Holloway’s election-projection track record holds up.

But Trump supporters might want to look beyond Holloway’s headline prediction. He outlines a “conceivable” scenario in which Trump could eke out a 275-263 victory, if Trump wins three “squeaker” states currently projected to go to Clinton.

Back in July 2012, the “Locker Room” highlighted a Barron’s article that featured Holloway’s prediction of re-election for Barack Obama. Holloway’s prediction, offered seven months before the election, came within seven electoral votes of calling that election exactly right.

Now Holloway is back. He submitted the following analysis to your “Locker Room” correspondent.

Attached please find two documents forecasting the November 2016 U.S. presidential election. This is the sixth such forecast, beginning with election year 1996, conducted by Reid Holloway, a strategic consultant and manager in finance and real estate, who for more than two decades has applied a quantitative model to predict not only electoral college outcomes but also the individual popular vote totals in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

This year Mr. Holloway is predicting Hillary Clinton will win the White House, with 303 electoral votes vs. 235 electoral votes for Donald Trump.

Mr. Holloway’s model does not rely on polling, and is based on the central concept that demographic conditions and shifts are more important than “nose-counting” and debates over the issues in determining presidential election outcomes. Elements of his forecasting model are based on another quantitative model he has developed to measure stock market volatility. His model in 2012 predicted President Obama’s reelection victory over Mitt Romney within seven electoral votes, calling all but three states with hairsbreadth margins correctly, and did so more than seven months preceding the election (emphasis in original document).

This year Mr. Holloway identifies Colorado, Florida, Ohio and Virginia as the closest states between the two candidates. But he further notes that these four states rank among seven states whose dependence on federal transfer programs such as food stamps (supplemental nutrition assistance or SNAP) are growing at a rate faster than the national average. These trends lead him to conclude that the nation is shifting leftward, and that these critically close states will “seal the deal” for Mrs. Clinton. Only Florida is given to Mr. Trump in his forecast while the rest are earmarked for Mrs. Clinton.

If, however, the three states among these “squeakers” identified by his forecast as Mrs. Clinton’s were to flip to Mr. Trump, and Mr. Trump also carried Florida, the New York real estate developer and reality television show legend could conceivably win the election this fall by a razor thin margin of 275 electoral votes for Mr. Trump and 263 for Mrs. Clinton. He views such a scenario as conceivable but highly unlikely.

Want more detail? Notes and background context for 2016 forecast