[2] Fayette County is part of the Lexington-Fayette, KY Metropolitan Statistical Area.

Together, these counties and those set off from them later in that decade separated from Virginia in 1792 to become the Commonwealth of Kentucky.

The county is named for the Marquis de LaFayette, who moved to the United States to support the colonies rebelling against British rule during the American Revolutionary War.

Between 1952 and 2004, it voted for the Republican nominee all but twice, for Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964 and Bill Clinton in 1996, with the latter only carrying the county by a narrow plurality.

Even Southern Democrat Jimmy Carter lost the county by 11 points in 1976, despite winning Kentucky by a comfortable margin.

In 2020, Joe Biden turned in the strongest showing for a Democrat in the county in over a century, bettering even Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Also in 2020, Donald Trump received the lowest portion of the vote for any Republican candidate in the county since William Howard Taft in 1912.

The county voted "No" on 2022 Kentucky Amendment 2, an anti-abortion ballot measure, by 73% to 27%, outpacing its support of Joe Biden during the 2020 presidential election.