From its snow-capped mountains to sandy beaches, battle lines are being drawn between two well-known locals as the fight for Eden-Monaro begins.

On one side is Dr Peter Hendy, the incumbent Liberal member. On the other is Dr Mike Kelly, the man he ousted from the seat three years earlier.

Their battleground is the 41,617-square-kilometre electorate which takes in Yass, Murrumbateman, Queanbeyan, Tumut, Tumbarumba, Cooma, Bombala, Bega, Eden, Merimbula and Narooma.

For the past 44 years, the party that has taken the vast electorate in south-eastern NSW has taken government.

While Dr Hendy secured the seat with a wafer-thin 0.6 per cent majority at the 2013 election, political analysts believe the recent shift in electoral boundaries could help swing the vote further in the Coalition's favour.

"The new boundaries take in much more rural areas than before, and exclude Batemans Bay, so if anything the electorate may have shifted slightly more conservative," Dr Jill Sheppard, a lecturer with Australian National University's School of Politics and International Relations, said.

"Previously, Batemans Bay and Queanbeyan were the two main centres of the seat. Now, the population of Eden-Monaro is split between Queanbeyan and Yass, with the rest of the electorate dispersed from Adelong in the west to Thredbo and Eden in the south. Candidates will have to tread new ground around Tumut and Yass and come to grips with the issues facing these newly added towns."

But while some say this could make the electorate lose its legendary bellwether status, Dr Brendan McCaffrie from the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis at the University of Canberra reckoned this shift may encourage Eden-Monaro to behave more like the bellwether it has been.

"Over the past couple of decades, the only major growth within the seat has been in Queanbeyan, which has been driven primarily by rising house prices in Canberra," Dr McCaffrie said.

"This has meant a sharp increase in public servants living in Eden-Monaro, who are more likely to vote Labor and have been starting to shift the balance of the seat. Queanbeyan typically has been the most Labor-voting of the local government areas in Eden-Monaro.

"At the last three elections, although Eden-Monaro has voted with the winner, it had started to slightly favour Labor when compared with the national vote. On paper, it looks like this change may correct that tendency, at least for the short term."

But while Dr Hendy will have the advantages of office, Dr Kelly is still well known and regarded widely across the electorate from his six years in office.

This makes it anyone's game, emeritus professor of political science at the Australian National University in Canberra Dr John Warhurst said.

"If Mike Kelly had given up, you might say it would be less likely [that Dr Hendy would lose] but the fact is he's got those six years of being an MP, so perhaps the advantages that Peter Hendy might otherwise have as the incumbent don't apply so much," Professor Warhurst said.

A strong relationship with voters right across the electorate is what former member for Eden-Monaro Gary Nairn believes is key to winning or losing the seat.

"Because of the geography to an extent, the communities become quite distinct in themselves," Mr Nairn said.

"The things that were going on in Eden were very different to what was going on in Merimbula or Bega so you really have to build those strong relationships in each of those major locations."

This balance is the key to Eden-Monaro's bellwether reputation, Mr Nairn said. "I would say there's a little bit of the whole of Australia in Eden-Monaro, which you can't say for most other electorates."

Dr McCaffrie disagrees: "[Eden-Monaro is] less ethnically diverse than the rest of the nation, has fewer people employed as professionals and has more farmers, and thanks to recent changes, more public servants than the nation as a whole.

"The bellwether status relies on the fact that there is a stable balance between Liberal-voting rural areas like Cooma, and the Snowy Mountains, more-Labor voting areas, especially Queanbeyan, and a large stretch of coastal areas that tend to swing to the winning side."

Dr Sheppard said voters in Eden-Monaro know that the eyes of the country turn to them on election night "for superstitious reasons or otherwise".

"The vastly changed boundaries of the electorate may cause some surprises come election day," she said.

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