The U.S. Census Bureau is the original source of most demographic data about U.S. localities.
The Census Bureau's web site is enormous, amazing, and intimidating, and it may take a while to learn your way around. For this course's assignment, the American FactFinder database should be most helpful.
Entering the name buena vista will lead to an array of categories of data, beginning with "Population," but including 9 other categories, such as "Race and Hispanic Origin." Each of these displays basic information and includes links to much more detailed materials.
A Virginia state government agency, the Virginia Employment Commission, produces "Community Profiles" which incorporate Census data and other sources into reports on local areas. You can use this VEC page to generate such reports for Lexington, Buena Vista, and Rockbridge by using the "Counties and Cities" option.
Here are links to several relevant studies by students in W&L's Shepherd Program about the Rockbridge/Buena Vista/Lexington area.
The W&L Department of Journalism and Mass Communications produces The Rockbridge Report, with multimedia news stories about the local community: Buena Vista | Lexington | Rockbridge County
There are zillions of sources out there which provide data on voting at various levels of government in the U.S. For this course assignment, we recommend an official government source -- the Elections Database from the Virginia Board of Elections.
Use the "Explore the Data" box to select the date(s) of the election(s) you want to investigate.
The first level of results you get will be state-wide, but you can click on the results in the "Candidates" column to generate a "See Details for this Election" link. There you can find results for localities such as Buena Vista.