Are we all good to start?

- Yeah.

- I think so.

- I'll let you lead the way.

- Okay cool.

My name is Billy, and I run the Sawtooth Ranch with my husband.

- Hi.

- Say your name.

- Devan, sorry.

- Faustina was the first ewe to give birth this season, on Devan's birthday.

I'm going to do a little yelling.

Hup hup.

Come on, sheep.

One of the is, will act like the bellwether and be the leader and the rest will kind of follow along.

- This is Lauren Gallup.

And this is me.

Last spring we learned that Clallam County, the last bellwether county in the country, is right here in Washington state.

And we wanted to visit it for ourselves.

In sheep herding a bellwether means a male sheep with a bell around his neck.

When the shepherd is away, he leads the flock.

In politics, a bellwether county is its own type of leader.

A county that votes for the same presidential candidate as the rest of the country.

That means that since 1980, Clallam County has chosen Reagan, Bush, Clinton, the next Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden.

Encompassing the northernmost slice of the Olympic Peninsula, Clallam Count is home to the Hoh Rainforest, the Olympic Mountains, miles of coastline, four federally recognized tribes timber, fishing, service and farming industries... Oh, and the sparkly vampires are from here too.

Lauren and I spent several days in and around Port Angeles hoping to learn more about thi place, the people living here, and what sets i apart from America's over 3000 other counties.

Why is Clallam the last bellwether standing?

- Okay, I know what my favorite thing is so Im going to show you guys.

This is our climate controlled secure archives, which has everything from the Teddy Growls are the Roosevelt High Schools, like, newspaper from, like, going back to the sixties, old newspapers, our rare books library.

This is all reference photos.

Weve got hundreds of thousands of those.

And then we actually have a pretty massive collection of artwork.

These two amazing paintings.

The title of this painting is The Prince of Peace.

And you can see FDR, and he's sitting at a very Last Supper-ish table.

And then they've all got the ghost of Abraham Lincoln floating behind them t make sure that they do no wrong.

It's just such an amazingly bizarre painting.

There are all of these sort of different political influences as soon as Clallam County became a county.

- How do you think that that has influenced the political landscape in this community?

- That's like a 30 minute answer.

Instead of sort of conservative and liberal, you could think of it as more as pro and anti regulation.

- I think there's a lot of things that appeal to folks across the political spectrum here.

- Federal regulations are not in the best interest of timber economy but federal regulations are great if you're interested in tourism and preserving the parks.

- There's a lot of folks that, like, want to start their own farms or homesteading, and those folks can come from all sorts of different political backgrounds and so... - Between those factors, I thin that's kind of how we ended up as being like the fulcrum in the political seesaw.

- Sorry.

Im so sorry, Tela.

- People out here are really independent.

I describe Port Angeles as the end of the road.

- You know, it' a whole different pace out here.

We don't have to deal with the big stuff or the cities.

- A warm tight knit community.

Kind of has a feel of, you mess with one of us you mess with the whole of us.

- I think there's a certain friendliness here as well.

My neighbor is a person, not an opposit- you know, not an enemy.

Were here at the Port Angeles Senior and Community Center.

Every Thursday, community members are invited to come talk politics.

- Calling people who support Trump white, Christian, nationalists, I would like to know, actually from you guys, what that means.

- That's part of the propaganda thrust is to point out to the white Christian males, especially tha they are being disenfranchised.

- At first blush, these conflicting views can feel jarring almost like a political debate.

But looking closer, all these people are voluntaril here to discuss their politics and listen to viewpoint that are different from theirs.

- We as a nation are too selfish to even take care of our own poor.

- Yes.

- All the more reason why Im saying let's take care of them first.

- We should be supporting, we should be.

And why aren't we?

Why do we cut funding to- ?

- Why do we have drugs?

They're coming across the southern border.

- I'm totally in favor of legal immigration.

But they do need to be vetted.

It hasn't worked in Sweden.

Ther hasn't been a good assimilation.

- When somebody says immigration is a problem because people have cultural differences.

That' what people mean when they say white, Christian, nationalism.

- If the presidential election was today, do you know who you would vote for?

- Oh, I don't know.

I'm pretty interested in ho they take care of the borders.

- I never thought I'd say this- - I probably just wouldn't vote.

-Trump.

-Anybody but Donald Trump.

- Will you stick your tape recor out the side?

Like the ebbing tide here in Port Angeles, America's politics can feel powerful and inevitable.

Spending time in Clallam County reminded me that the shore doesn't pani when the waves head out to sea.

It knows they will return.

At the end of all our reporting, no one could tell us whether Clallam County will remain a bellwether in the fall, but no one seemed worried either.

Here in this calm place between the mountains and the sea.

people disagree about a lot of things.

But almost everyone seems to agree on one thing: Clallam County.

- I have a lot of students, they don't want to leave Clallam County.

They don't want to leave where they live.

- Were in a really specific type of setting.

I do feel like people really are community minded and looking out for each other.

- Because there's so many people that are, even outside of the tribes, you know, they're five, six, seven generations deep.

They really feel strongly about the importance of this place.

- We live where we can look, watch the mountains.

You know, I lov watching the snow come and go.

- One thing abou in this community that I feel is when it comes down to brass tacks, I can rely on any of my neighbors, regardles of their political affiliation.