My county is Watauga County, NC.
(Ignore the townships. They have zero relevance to anything.)
Watauga is a small county located in NW North Carolina. It is more populous and urban than any other county in the area, yet still is rather rural. It functions as the main center of commerce for most of the High Country.
Boone is the county seat of Watauga County, and is thus both the geographic and population center of the county. It is home to Appalachian State University, which is the county's main employer. ASU's presence has influenced the county in various profound ways; it is the only real base for the county's Democratic population. ASU is a fairly liberal university (sustainable development is a very popular major and it is partially powered by geothermal energy) and it has given Boone a hippy-ish culture. Needless to say, Boone is very strongly democratic, voting for Obama over 60% in 2008.
The Republican margin increases the further one goes away from Boone, in all directions. Democrats are only competitive in precincts which include a sliver of town, or in Todd and Blowing Rock.
Blowing Rock is the next largest town. It generally leans R, on account of being home to affluent, often Floridian, snowbirds who like quaint old towns. Democrats can win here if they do well- they won the Blowing Rock precinct in 2008 by a tiny margin.
There are a wide number of settlements, some of which are incorporated and most of which are not. Seven Devils is a bit like a further extension of Blowing Rock. It is even wealthier and even more conservative, but it has very few residents and so doesn't matter much more than Sugar Grove or Vilas or Aho. Todd is the only area of remote interest from a political perspective, in that it is fairly winnable for the proper Democratic candidate. It has a pretty small population however, including a few hippy types in the necessary concentration to swing it.
Most of the rest of the county is very poor and conservative, with the occasional smattering of wealthy retiree enclaves on mountaintops. Both of these demographics tend very GOP, although the former less so than the latter.
Watauga County is overwhelmingly white. The small black population is concentrated in the historically black neighborhood of Junaluska, while the Latino population is more rural, in part due to the fact that many work in the Christmas Tree industry.
Politics in Watauga County are highly polarized, and more comparable to national politics in terms of party platform rather than the traditional blue-doginess of other places. This is mostly due to the unusual Democratic base (left wing students rather than yellow-dog southrons) and their clashes with the Tea Party local population.
In addition to national issues, development and environmental policy are highly prominent; the local GOP tends to be rather big on non-zoning and large vacation developments like so:
The local democrats object strongly to these on the grounds of environmental preservation, although these attitudes sometimes border on NIMBYism.
Also important is voting rights, mostly due to the wacky hijinks of the GOP-run local board of elections, which has been trying to disenfranchise ASU students in a wide variety of ways, garnering
international attention.
