Oconee County is mostly married White college grads with children at home, which is still a mostly Republican demographic at the national level and especially in the South.
There's a very different composition of college educated voters in bigger cities/nearer suburbs, where they tend to be younger, less White and less likely to be married/have kids.
The issue is less that it's Republican and more that it's Republican in a way which is highly correlated with county lines.
The area in gold is pretty close to downtown Athens, in much the same way as the areas in red. But all of the former remain GOP, while the latter is still D. Is it related to the school systems? Is the river a massive psychological and cultural barrier? What's the deal?
The outer neighborhoods of Athens (epescially on the north and east sides) are significantly more Black/Latino than the downtown areas, which are more student dominanted. Oconee County is laughably White (>80%.)
As to why Athens developed that way...downtown Athens back during the 1970s-90s was a real rough place. Growth at UGA added a lot of development pressure (student apartments/condos) in the downtown core, which displaced poorer Black residents into less central neighborhoods. This probably created a cascading effect where White families then fled outer Athens for Oconee, which over time developed better schools than Athens.
