Georgia could be set to elect the first black female governor in US history after lawyer Stacey Abrams won the Democratic primary for the race.
Ms Abrams has already made history as both the first black candidate and the first woman to be nominated by a major party in the southern state.
The 44-year-old lawyer will face a Republican candidate in November’s high-stakes election.
A Democrat has not been elected governor in the deeply conservative state since 2003.
Ms Abrams, who won 75 per cent of the vote in Tuesday’s Democratic primary, said: “We are writing the next chapter of Georgia’s history, where no one is unseen, no one is unheard and no one is uninspired”.
President Trump won Georgia, whose capital city Atlanta is a magnet for immigrants from across the world, by just five percentage points in the 2016 presidential race.
AP
However Ms Abrams has suggested she is unlikely to target rural white voters who have abandoned the Democratic party, telling voters that attempts to "convert" Republicans into Democrats had previously failed.
Three other southern states – Kentucky, Arkansas and Texas – also elected female nominees in Democratic primaries on Tuesday ahead of the midterm elections.
The US currently has just six female governors, but the increase in successful female candidates in various political races has been seen in the context of the ‘Me Too’ and ‘Times Up’ movements.
That was certainly the view of Amy McGrath, a former fighter pilot, who won a Kentucky primary for a seat in the US House of Representatives.
"It’s more, this time, this climate, right now," she told CNN before her win against Jim Gray, mayor of Lexington. "It’s very clear that people are looking for more women."
Ms Abrams, who has a law degree from Yale University and a masters from the University of Texas is considered a rising star within Democratic party’s progressive faction.
Hillary Clinton, whom Ms Abrams strongly backed in the presidential election, recorded a robocall for her ahead of Tuesday’s race.
A number of other prominent Democrats, including Bernie Sanders and Kirsten Gillibrand, have backed the Georgia nominee.
Ms Abrams, who was elected to Georgia’s state House of Representative in 2006, has also written eight romantic novels under the pen name Selena Montgomery.
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