Let's get the cookie count out of the way first. Because in a place as seemingly conflicted as Beaver County, maybe cookies are as good a political barometer as anything else. At Kretchmar's bakery, on the main street of the prim and leafy river town of Beaver, the cookies with John McCain's face on them were outselling their Barack Obama counterparts, 1,008-930, yesterday afternoon.

An aromatic omen? Will Beaver County finally tilt for a Republican presidential candidate? Or will its wayward Democrats, who outnumber registered Republicans roughly 2-1, return to the fold and deliver for Sen. Barack Obama, even though they were barely able to muster a majority for Sen. John F. Kerry four years ago?

Maybe the bakery owner has some insight.

"It's tough to say," said Lincoln Kretchmar. "I think it's going to be very, very close."

And that's as far as anyone, bakery owner or otherwise, will specifically predict, because Beaver County defies easy political description.

Yes, it's part of the swath of southwestern Pennsylvania that U.S. Rep. John Murtha, D-Johnstown, called "racist." Yes, it's part of a Rust Belt that, more than two decades after the steel industry's collapse, continues to shrink and suffer economically, and yes, it's home to many of those Reagan Democrats, the economically liberal, socially conservative blue-collar voices who broke away from Jimmy Carter in the 1980s.

But Beaver County also comprises Pittsburgh bedroom communities, areas like Hanover and Hopewell that, until recently, were home to much of US Airways' local work force. It has mill towns (Beaver Falls) and railroad towns (Conway), dairy farms (Independence) and suburban housing tracts (Chippewa), scruffy city blocks (Aliquippa) and polished Republican enclaves (Beaver). It has veterans and union workers, Croatians and Serbs, Italian Catholics and Appalachian Scots-Irish, whose collective temperament and parochial sensibilities have come to define the region.

And despite that patchwork, many of those interviewed this week think the election, at least in these parts, will ultimately hinge on the unavoidable issue of Mr. Obama's race, especially among the older generations, for whom racial prejudices are arguably more innate. Like Allegheny County, Beaver County is older than the country at large -- 18 percent of its residents are over 65.

"Racism was a part of your upbringing," said Obama supporter Charlie Hamilton, a U.S. Postal Service retiree. He's 76, and went to high school post-World War II. "That thing still lingers on in this generation."

Beaver County is "one of the most racist communities that you can find," claims Monaca's Tom Pranskey, who used to work at the looming Phoenix Glass factory. His front window bears three Obama-Biden stickers, but some friends and family aren't so open to electing a brown-skinned man to the nation's highest office. That goes for his own daughter, he said.

"I'm trying to convince her," he said. "It's a shame."

For others, it's less about race than it is about the Democrats' continued loyalty toward the Clinton family, and continued suspicion of a man who painted too broadly in calling small-town Pennsylvanians bitter about their lot in life. In the primary campaign, Mr. Obama performed well among the college-educated, minorities and the more financially secure, while New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton was popular among white, blue-collar and Catholic voters.

"Hillary Clinton was very popular," said Charles Camp, the lone Republican on Beaver County's three-man commissioners board. "She waxed Obama in the Democratic primary" -- by 40 percentage points.

Some of those Democrats might be inclined to vote for Arizona Sen. John McCain.

It's why Mr. Obama has been working so hard to mend fences with Pennsylvania Democrats like Georgiann Mansell, mother of five grown children and former Ambridge borough councilwoman. After Mrs. Clinton conceded the nomination, Ms. Mansell considered voting for neither presidential candidate.

"I didn't know him," she said of Mr. Obama. "I didn't trust, completely, the vetting process. ... My biggest objection, I think, was 'It's too soon.' It was a bit presumptuous that he hadn't paid his dues yet."

Now, though, she intends to vote for Mr. Obama. As with many Democrats, Ms. Mansell says the economy and the prospect of another Republican presidency, as well as a growing familiarity with the Illinois senator, has convinced her that Mr. Obama, if not her first choice, is better than the alternative.

If the McCain-Palin ticket carries Beaver County, it would be the continuation of a shift -- southwestern counties once impenetrable to Republicans are voting on culture and conservative values, rather than labor issues. In 2004, Westmoreland County tilted to President Bush for the second time in a row. Heavily Democratic Greene County favored Mr. Bush by 1,000. Johnstown's Cambria County, for the first time in decades, went for a Republican in 2004, with Mr. Bush besting Mr. Kerry by 1,500 votes.

Four years ago in Beaver County, the Democratic candidate squeaked by with a thin 51-48 margin. This could be the year it tips to the GOP, hopes Diana Boffo, a McCain supporter from New Sewickley.

"I think we see a lot of enthusiasm for McCain-Palin," she said. Though official estimates pegged the attendance of last week's Palin rally at 2,000 to 4,000, local GOP organizers say it was closer to 9,000, and indicative of the Alaska governor's popularity among cultural conservatives.

Abortion and gun rights are big issues here, even among Democrats -- and gun rights are especially important to the 22,000 Beaver County veterans, said Eric Hoover, vice president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 201.

"It's about issue education," he said. "We've got to combat the [National Rifle Association]," which endorsed 4th District Congressman Jason Altmire, but has vigorously opposed Mr. Obama.

Union members have been going door to door, sending out pamphlets and making phone calls, telling those many veterans that Mr. Obama won't take their guns, reminding seniors that Mr. Obama, unlike Republicans, didn't want to invest a portion of the Social Security fund in the stock market.

It's a hard sell, said Dennis Bloom, who works in Shippingport, home to the county's nuclear power plant, one of its largest employers. Though other trade unions are seeing greater numbers of black members, there still aren't a lot of minorities at the power plant.

"You hit the race issue the minute you put an Obama sticker on your hard hat at work," said Mr. Bloom. "That's the way it goes." His Obama lawn signs, he said, have been stolen -- twice.

If they can't count on the labor vote like they did a generation ago, Beaver County's Democrats can rely on the black vote to a greater degree than Pittsburgh's other suburban counties. Beaver County has a greater share of minorities (6 percent of its residents are black, according to the last census) than Cambria, Westmoreland or Greene. If recent polls are accurate, they'll be voting with the Obama-Biden ticket about 19 times in 20, among them Lottie Green.

On Midland's Ohio Avenue, where she lives, there are 10 Obama signs for every McCain sign. Midland's population is 20 percent black. Ms. Green hopes Beaver County has gotten over its racial jitters, but "once you get in the booth, you can't ever tell" what a voter will decide.

Recent history has demonstrated that Beaver County Democrats aren't afraid to split a ticket if they're uncomfortable about a candidate. In 2006, as a Democratic tide swept candidates into office statewide and nationally, Beaver County took special care to boot longtime Democratic state Rep. Mike Veon out of office. These same voters were overwhelmingly smitten with incumbent Gov. Ed Rendell and Washington, D.C., newcomers Mr. Altmire and Bob Casey, all Democrats.

This year, there are other variables at work. Mr. Veon has since been criminally charged as part of a state investigation, as has young state Rep. Sean Ramaley, D-Economy, as has the wife of state Sen. Gerald LaValle, also a Democrat. Perhaps the steady flow of criminal cases tied to the county's Democratic power structure is enough to turn away some voters entirely.

"It has hurt the Democratic Party here really bad," said Republican James Equels Sr. of Brighton Township, a minister and veteran. "We're getting benefits from the whole thing. They got to the place where you can't trust the Democratic Party."