A politics student is hoping to unseat a political veteran in the race to claim the Waitaki seat.
Whoever wins had better be prepared to clock up some serious kilometres, as they will represent the third-largest electorate in New Zealand.
With scandals and upheaval in surrounding areas, it is also arguably the most stable of the southern electorates.
Long-term incumbent National MP Jacqui Dean has held the seat since 2005, and always by a significant margin.
She is considered a solid performer and her star has risen over the years, culminating in her recent promotion to No14 in the caucus rankings under leader Judith Collins.
She holds the party’s conservation, housing and urban development portfolios.
She faces a challenge from Labour Party candidate and University of Otago politics student Liam Wairepo (21).
A residential assistant at Dunedin’s Salmond College, Mr Wairepo highlighted mental health and the growing scourge of methamphetamine as key issues he wanted to focus on when announcing his campaign.
Despite living in Dunedin, he has made the effort to have a presence in the electorate and has opened a campaign office in Oamaru.
Nevertheless, it will be an uphill battle for him to roll Ms Dean in a National stronghold.
He was also ranked second to last on Labour’s list, meaning he is unlikely to make it into Parliament as a list MP.
He told the Otago Daily Times the ranking did not surprise him.
"This is my first election. I was realistic going into it," he said.
Waitaki’s party vote has been strongly aligned with National, which received 54% of the vote compared with Labour’s 30% in 2017.
Electorate boundary changes released in April meant Waitaki lost Alexandra and Clyde to the renamed Southland seat, but retained Geraldine.
It also retains a large and diverse chunk of the South Island, encompassing rural towns, coastal communities and tourist hot spots.
They bring with them a broad range of different issues and challenges.
Once struggling under the weight of skyrocketing visitor numbers, Wanaka and parts of the Mackenzie district have been hit hard by Covid-19 and the worse than decimated international tourism industry. Job losses and business closures will badly affect the local economies there.
Meanwhile, more rural parts of the electorate are experiencing different, if not new, challenges of their own.
When former National leader Todd Muller visited Oamaru in the early stages of the campaign, the big topics were water and the Resource Management Act.
They have been long-running issues in the electorate, evidenced by the fact Ms Dean said, in her 2005 maiden speech in Parliament, that water — "how we look after it, how we use it, and how we manage its use"— was the single most important issue facing the electorate.
All the current parliamentary parties are running candidates in Waitaki this election. They include Act New Zealand’s Sean Beamish, New Zealand First’s Anthony Odering, and the Green Party’s Sampsa Kiuru.
All candidates, barring Ms Dean, are first-time candidates.
