I've drawn the 1980/2012 comparison myself several times and I agree it is imperfect. And many of the comparisons here are superficial.  And the final paragraph is troubling to conservatives looking for a repeat:

On the weekend before the Reagan/Carter debate, undecideds had been moving (slightly) towards Carter, who had a lead of three or so votes in the polls. The Thursday after (the debate was on Tuesday) Reagan was leading by four. That weekend—November 2-3—marked the anniversary of the takeover of the American embassy, and the collapse of negotiations aimed at ending the occupation and stalemate. By Sunday night, Caddell was seeing "some worrisome numbers." A day later, he called Hamilton Jordan in Portland and told him Carter would lose by 10 points. On Tuesday morning, Richard Wirthlin learned Reagan would carry Kentucky, and told him to get his speech ready. Reagan won the popular vote 51-41 percent (with 7 percent for independent candidate John Anderson), won 44 states to 6 for Carter, and 489 electoral votes to 49 for the president. "It’s a fed-up vote," Caddell told Elizabeth Drew of the New Yorker. For a year, they had tried to "keep the wolf from the door" and at last it engulfed them: A poll published November 16 showed that one in five registered voters had changed his mind in the final four days before the election, and the renewed emphasis on the hostage crisis crystallized the profound discontent. "I was convinced that these things were flying around out there," Carter adviser Robert Strauss told Germond and Witcover. "The thing that pulled them together was the hostage thing. . . . Reagan had not really been able to do that. He began [in the debate] with “Are you better off now?” . . . but it still needed something, and that was the absolute spark." In the event, Strauss averred, no distractions would have sufficed to obscure the reality. "The real world is all around us," Strauss said.

Will "the real world" this time trip up Obama? We’ll have to wait until Tuesday to see.

If the Iran hostage crisis was the tipping point, then there is no counter part to that in this race, although there should be. The media has given President Obama cover on Benghazi(with the exception of Fox News) rather than exposing it. Also, Sandy should be Obama's Katrina. The response has been awful. But this is the pass liberals get in the MSM. If voters have found these two realities largely on their own, then it will be a repeat of 1980.