Accurate play AGAINST 1.e4 can lead to easier equality than accurate play against 1.d4. 1.e4 leads to more early traps and a quicker "attempt" at the King, but if Black knows what he's doing, White's attack is useless. You can't just go throwing a couple of pieces at the king with their heads chopped off and expect them to do anything. You need the whole army.
I speak with 17 years tournament experience (Over the board). Younger players (i.e. Teenagers) and lower rated players tend to favor 1.e4. The teens don't have the patience to play a long, drawn out game. They get restless, irritable, bored, and they start making mistakes, ESPECIALLY in endgames. Lower rated players (i.e. Your 50-year old man that never studied, just played for 10 years) don't have the endurance to go 60 moves without making small errors, typically positional in nature, because they barely understand the concept of a long term plan or weaknesses. They might see 2 or 3 moves ahead, and then just say "ok, let's see what happens and I'll figure out the rest then". Just a little logic in that Quick attacks occur more often with 1.e4 combined with the law of probability that you are more likely to make 20 good moves in a row than you are 50 good moves in a row explains why you see e4 a lot on the lower boards.
1.d4, 1.c4, and 1.Nf3 require a certain level of maturity. Something most lower-rated and younger chess players don't have. After 20 moves, assuming you are White, you are happy with the small advantage. After move 20, Fritz says it's +0.45, you're loving life! Of course, the rare few cases that it's +2.50 you surely won't object to. You understand the small advantages that get you that +0.45 assessment, like Black's weak c5 square, Black's backwards c6 pawn, and the Good Knight vs Black's Bad Light-Squared Bishop. None of these things are going to blow Black out of the water, but the position for Black may very well already be lost, but a lost position that requires 35 more moves by White to execute (once again, that whole concept of the slower the attack, the more room there is to error).
So which is better for White? Having a huge advantage 1 game out of every 10, and a dead equal position the other 9? Or having these small advantages that you can achieve as White all 10 times, but they all require a good amount of work to convert them? I'll take the small advantage every time over gambling just to get a larger advantage occasionally and otherwise just getting nothing to show for the fact that you went first!
I like this post.
I would add the fact that when the position is open and tactical it starts to reward memorization of opening theory a bit too much. That means that you can play the first 15 (or even 20!) moves of a game against perfect play, even against a player who wouldn't be able to do a Lucena!
I prefer a game that rewards positional understanding. I also want a game that rewards creativity (i.e. coming up with my own plans) and I believe this applies more to d4 openings, because both players have a vast variety of moves at their disposal. So theory is less relevant.
I know there are some lines with monster theory even in d4 openings (e.g. botvinnik slav, Mar Del Plata KID, etc.). But the good thing is that you can avoid all of them and still retain white's advantage.
In e4 openings you do need to know a bunch of theory against black's defences. Most importantly, lines are more forced so there's less space for you to come up with your own ideas.
The QGD seems like 45%win 35%draw 20%lose