Popular vote: How close was the race?

>> team is here to break things down. nbc's andrea mitchell , nbc news special correspondent tom brokaw and david gregory , moderator of "meet the press" collectively sleepless in democracy plaza. good morning, everybody.

>> good morning.

>> let's go to the bottom line, looking at the electoral results it looks like a rout. if you look at the national polling, it's a much closer race. how close is this race, david, and what does it mean for governing?

>> well, i think it ultimately wasn't as close because the obama team did what it had to do it. believed the electorate would look a certain way, namely be considerably more diverse and that they could get those voters out, despite the fact that a lot of younger voters, latinos, other minorities were not as fired up about the president four years on after a very tough four years, but they got those folks out, overwhelmed that enthusiasm for romney and against the president but there's still a lot of divisions here. we heard it from some leaders on capitol hill last night saying that there's no mandate here for the president. that will be debated given these results.

>> leads me to the next question. we have a status quo election. you wake up, a democratic senate, a republican house. you have a president, president obama . business as usual . does that mean we're going to have status quo gridlock? in my mind it reminds me of an old expression it's like winning a pie-eating contest and the prize is more pie.

>> you know. this is a more partisan house among the house republicans. the democrats did not pick up seats. they lost seats. the senate is a different animal. the democrats did very well, there but you have both houses with republican leadership saying no new taxes, no compromise. there are some people willing to work around that. you've got john cornyn who made a very gracious statements. others leaning -- they have been working behind the scenes . can they come together, and can we find leaders outside of congress? i continue to believe that it's going to be the republican governors that end up leading the republican party to rethink its destiny because it is not in this -- it cannot ignore demographies.

>> i want to talk about the republican party in a moment, but first this is not an abstract proposition can they work together, tom? we face a fiscal cliff, huge issues, and there's going to have to be some kind of compromise.

>> judgment day the day after the election for everybody, frankly, and i don't think that there's anyone in the house or the senate or anyone that i know and certainly not the president who wants to go off that cliff come january because it's going to be a terrible scar, not only on those individuals and on their parties, but on this country at a very crucial time, so my guess is that the president will initiate something reasonably bold, and as andrea indicated, i think there will be pressure from the outside in washington. simultaneously, there's something else under way this morning within the republican party saying we have to change. we cannot go on like this because we keep narrowing the base, and there are a lot of republicans, very senior republicans who have had success in the past and looked at that primary procedure and saw that as a prescription for what happened last night. they were running a retro campaign in the 21st century when things have changed, and the obama people were running a pote modern campaign with technology and looking at the diverse electorate we now have.

>> some people say republican soul searching , other republicans say it will be civil war .

>> no question. paul ryan is a leader of this party. is it that they were not conservative enough? the reality is mitt romney won a near historic portion of the white vote in america, and he suffered a very bad loss. that's because the country looks different. it has changed. the party has got to find a way to reach out to latinos, the fastest growing voting bloc to become a more diverse party with the ability to shed some of the orthodoxy around taxes, around spending over the role of government, and this process is going to begin this morning, the soul searching and redefinition.

>> andrea, tom and david, we know you'll be watching, but i hope you sleep at some point today.