WASHINGTON _ Since Hillary Clinton's November defeat, Democrats have squabbled over how to return to prominence.
Should they continue to court ascendant voter groups in the country, such as women, minorities and young people? Or should they turn to those who have long been in their camp but abandoned the party nominee this year, such as rural and non-college-educated voters.
The answer, according to a Pew Research poll published Tuesday: Democrats want to walk both paths, simultaneously.
The poll asked Democrats and Republicans whether their parties had spent too much, too little or just the right amount of time meeting the interests and concerns of specific groups of voters.
Among Democrats, 64 percent said the party had spent too little time talking to rural voters, and 58 percent said the same about non-college voters.
Almost two-thirds of Democrats said low-income voters had not gotten enough of the party's attention, and 58 percent said middle-class voters had been ignored to some extent.
But Democratic voters did not want to let up on the party's outreach to its stronger supporters this year.
About half said that the concerns of women and black voters had gotten too little attention, while 43 percent said the same about Latinos.
In the case of women, blacks, Latinos, low-income voters, rural residents and younger voters, Democrats were substantially more likely than Republicans to say their party had not put enough emphasis on the groups' concerns.
The poll suggested far more confidence by Republicans than Democrats in their party's current positioning.
Much of that may simply be the flood of confidence that accompanies a presidential victory.
When the pollsters asked before the election about their view of their party, 61 percent of Republicans said they were optimistic, as did 77 percent of Democrats about their own party.
After the election those figures reversed, with 79 percent of Republicans optimistic compared with 61 percent of Democrats.
A key to Trump's success also was evident in the poll: a chameleon-like ability to make the different ideological groups in the party think he was one of them.
Almost 3 in 5 conservatives said that Trump's views were conservative. And among moderates, 52 percent said that Trump's ideology was a mix of conservative and liberal, echoing their own posture.
But queries about the new president's effect on his party drew sharply partisan responses. More than two-thirds of all voters said that Trump had forced major changes on his party.
Yet 72 percent of Democrats cast those changes as bad ones, while 83 percent of Republicans cast the changes as good ones.
