WASHINGTON — Stacey Abrams and Stacey Evans are both lawyers, both Democrats, and both running for governor of Georgia in Tuesday's primary, which is being watched as test of competing electoral strategies for Democrats in the Donald Trump era.

Each Stacey has inspiring personal stories — Abrams was one of six children in a black family that struggled with economic and racial obstacles, while Evans was raised by a teenage mother who moved the family 16 times in 18 years to stay ahead of bill collectors and abusive men.

Both are are former state representatives, both are running on similar policy platforms, and either would be Georgia's first female governor.

But what sets the two Staceys apart — what's drawn the attention of Democrats and political observers across the country this primary season — is less what they're promising to do in office, but how they'd get there, with each representing alternate paths for how the party might find its way out of the political wilderness.

Abrams' campaign is an extension of a long-term project she embarked on years ago to turn Georgia blue by mobilizing its growing population of minorities, young people, and unmarried women who don't vote for one reason or another.

"We can win if we talk to a different coalition of voters — keep the ones we have, but expand who we can get," as she told NBC News last year at a meeting of the National Governors Association. "In each election, we get better and better and closer and closer, and 2018 is our year."

Meanwhile, Evans argues Democrats need to focus on winning over swing voters, who are mostly whites.

"There are two competing strategies on display here," Evans said in a debate Thursday hosted by the Atlanta Press Club. "I am the candidate running the only race that can win in November because it's the only strategy that focuses on the entirety of Georgia."

"You have to not just run one play. You have to play defense and you have to play offense. That's why I want to go into the suburbs of Georgia and talk to moderate voters," she continued.

The split reflects a central debate Democrats everywhere have been having since their shocking defeat in 2016, when working class voters defected at the same time that minorities and young people stayed home.