The election would be a tossup but I'd say it leans very slightly towards McGovern assuming there's no Eagleton affair equivalent.
No way. McGovern wasn't blown out because of the Eagleton incident. He was blown out because he was seen as a left-wing extremist. That wouldn't change in 1976. Yes, he'd do better than he did in 1972 because of Watergate. But he still wouldn't win. Ford was seen as moderate and likable compared to Nixon. And he came pretty close to winning even against the also moderate and likable Carter, despite Watergate and the Nixon pardon. He would easily beat McGovern, who to the eyes of most of the public was neither moderate nor likable. It would have been a terrible idea for the Dems to nominate him; would have blown their best chance at winning an election in over a decade.
Remember that Carter was able to win by taking back the South for the Democrats. He was uniquely suited to doing that for obvious reasons, and even still outside of Georgia most of the South was relatively close -- he barely won Mississippi and lost Virginia, for example. And he didn't even do as well in Georgia or other Southern states he handily won as Nixon did in 1972. McGovern would have had no chance whatsoever of winning the South. You might say he would do a bit better in the West.
Maybe, but it wouldn't be anywhere near enough to win. Here's the best map I can see for him:
Which still comes out to:
Ford: 341McGovern: 197And honestly, I'm not even sure he would win all that. Basically I just looked at the states where McGovern did least horribly in 1972 and where Ford did worst in 1976 (excluding Southern states), or where Carter actually underperformed McGovern relative to the national vote, and tried to come up with a reasonable average of how he might have done based on that. It's still not pretty for McGovern.
