With its unique blend of urban and rural interests.
Madison County will be one of the places to watch on election night to determine who will be our next governor.
Kentucky Edition spoke to involved citizens in the community to see what issues are bringing them to the polls this year.
We do have this little microcosm of Kentucky located within Madison County.
We do have the Madison County seat of Richmond, where you have the university.
You also have Berea College just down to the south.
And additionally, you do have a lot of farms, a lot of rural area as well surrounding.
And we do seem to go the way that the the state totals go this year narrowly won this state by a very few votes in the 2019 race.
And so I think people are looking again to see whether or not we will go as the rest of the state ends up going.
I'm not a one issue voter by any means, so I tend to look at all of them, and there are several that I'm concerned about.
I have kids, so I'm always going to be concerned about education.
I'm always going to be concerned about employment opportunities and employment growth and things like that.
But I think for me, as a nonprofit leader in this community, one of the biggest issues that I'm always going to worry about are plans for the social service agencies and for folks who are of a lower income.
I see a lot of people in poverty, and I know that here in Madison County, affordable housing is a big issue as our homeless population continues to grow.
So those are some issues that I'm going to be looking at when I'm going to the polls.
I think people are really paying attention to words and actions of all the candidates.
I think they're looking at how they're going to deal with teachers and education.
People in the community are very into the abortion debate one way or the other.
As a first responder, you know, a lot of our fire department budgets and stuff come out of the state.
They give us a lot of funding throughout throughout the year for especially volunteers by being on the school board.
It's giving me a different set of eyes.
And I've seen what an administration can do to education.
But we want an administration that's going to support the local school boards and not dictate terms to them and make them do things when it should be a local control issue.
I do think that although some of the polls are showing commanding leads for Beshear, the race is actually going to be a lot closer than that because the polls do tend to underrepresented Republican voters.
I think basically this election is going to boil down to the turnout story.
So I'm a little bit skeptical about whether that 10% of people who are still undecided are actually for sure going to vote or if they're really undecided or not.
And so the question will probably turn on turnout and which side can actually mobilize their voters to the polls.
Kentucky, and especially in Madison County area, was very diverse because you would talk to a husband who is a Republican, but in the same household, you would have the wife who is a Democrat in the same household, which is very unusual from a lot of other places.
So you have you know, you have different views in the same house.
I don't believe voting straight ticket.
I don't want my color to win just because I'm registered one way.
I want the right person in who represents me and my beliefs and not just mine, but what's good for the whole right.
I want somebody who's willing to work with somebody on the other side of the aisle to come to a great solution rather than just trying to win an argument over something.
Now, according to experts, other bellwether counties in the governor's race include Canton and Campbell County in northern Kentucky, both of which were won by Governor Andy Beshear in 2019.