He was a popular president during a time of economic expansion with a number of substantive accomplishments under his belt, especially in foreign policy where he presided over detente with the USSR, the opening of relations with the PRC, and the gradual drawdown of troops from Vietnam. He had managed to get the high inflation of the late LBJ administration under control during his first term, and after a mild recession that had a minimal effect on unemployment the country returned to robust growth by the time of the 1972 election. He was by no means a modern tax-cutting Republican and famously used the phrase "I am now a Keynesian in economics" after taking the US off the gold standard. Crime had begun to rise extremely quickly during the late 1960s, and Nixon campaigned on law and order and nostalgia for the Eisenhower years when he was VP, which was especially effective with the urban blue collar workers who were traditionally a mainstay of Democratic support but were most negatively affected by rising crime, urban decay, and deindustrialization - even though Nixon was unable to alter those trends. He positioned himself as a centrist in domestic policy by creating the EPA via executive order, signing the Clean Air Act, supporting a universal health insurance system, enforcing court mandated busing to integrate schools, and supporting the ERA.

McGovern came out of a bruising primary that left him tarnished by a purported association with the unpopular New Left by a "Stop McGovern" movement in the party that saw him as too far left and the unelectable representative of anti-war activists and New Left radicals. He was unable to distinguish himself substantively from Nixon on policy grounds without actually taking far left stands which only served to strengthen that far left association in the public's perception, fairly or not. The Democrats were probably doomed in this election regardless of who they nominated, Nixon just had to sit back and not fuck up - which he did. But that fuck up would only come to light later with the Watergate scandal that brought down his administration.