Came across this today, do you think we are in a similar point in time except reversed for the democrats? Or just somebody using prior data avoid of context to support his point?
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Certainly I think it illustrates that control of Congress and statehouses doesn't necessarily translate into success for a presidential candidate. A Donald Trump nomination would have some interesting parallels with 1972, with a major party candidate who is seen as extreme by much of the voting population and whom the party establishment did not want.
On the other hand, 1972 was a very different election in a very different time. The long story short was that the Democratic coalition that dated back to the New Deal era was falling apart by the late 1960s. You could see the cracks developing as far back as the late 1940s, but the strong third party candidacy of George Wallace in the 1968 election was, in retrospect, when one can see that the coalition was doomed. It was nearly impossible for a national candidate to appeal to all parts of the Democratic base without actively alienating other parts. Jimmy Carter was able to patch together just enough of the coalition to win in 1976, aided by a weak economy, the Watergate scandal, and his particular appeal to Southerners (he was the first major party candidate for president from the Deep South since before the Civil War). That it took such a favorable set of circumstances to barely win a presidential election (albeit with a weak candidate) really illustrates how much trouble the Democrats were in at a national level.
A candidate only running in a particular state or district could concentrate on the portions of the base that were strongest there while benefiting a lot from some degree of inertia (Democrats had dominated Congress since the early 1930s and held a majority in both houses for nearly 20 years straight heading into the 1972 elections). The starkest contrast was in the South, where Democrats held virtually complete control at the state level and large majorities in Congress and would continue to do so even as they increasingly voted Republican in presidential elections.
The circumstances today by which the Republicans control Congress and most statehouses are quite different. They represent less the lingering effects of a previously dominant coalition as the issue of Democrats having difficulty turning out their voters for midterm elections and the ramifications of Republicans largely controlling the process of redistricting in the wake of the 2010 elections. It does seem that tensions between parts of the Republican coalition are increasing, as evidenced both by the rise of Trump and by the conflict between establishment and Tea Party factions in Congress, but I don't know that we can say the situation is that similar to 1972.
One additional thing to note is that the Democrats actually fared reasonably well down ballot that year despite the landslide loss in the presidential election. They suffered modest losses in the House, but not nearly enough to threaten their majority, and they actually gained a couple of seats in the Senate. This certainly makes me wonder if the best bet for the Republicans, if Trump gets the nomination, is to somewhat emulate what the Democrats did in 1972. Rather than a third party candidate, they could just work to distance themselves from him.
Finally, as disastrous as the McGovern campaign turned out to be, it ironically enough showed the beginnings of a new coalition that would allow the Democrats to win presidential elections again. That is, if one looks at the groups that McGovern overperformed with relative to his overall result, you can actually see the makings of what is now called the Obama coalition. McGovern may not have done well enough with these groups, and they may not have been a large enough share of the 1972 electorate to make a majority, but the current Democratic coalition is
sometimes referred to as George McGovern's revenge.
