[kem]

Your point is important, although I think farmers' political impact exceeds their voting power, especially in GOP-voting communities.

I know from personal experience that this issue and related issues have become very salient to farmers and those around them. It's not a small issue. When your livelihood depends on a very expensive piece of machinery, being able to repair it yourself (or have it repaired by whomever you want) is important, and farmers are talking to their friends and family about it. They're being screwed, and all they want to do is farm.

Also, this issue is bigger than what it nominally seems, because it affects equipment dealers and mechanics as well. I know dealers who are pissed as hell at Deere--they feel stabbed in the back by them because of this stuff.

This repair stuff is also the tip of the iceberg in terms of Deere's behavior lately too. Many people I know would list the right-to-repair issue as just one in a list of grievances they have against Deere. Over the last decade or so, there's been a huge shift in Deere's behavior, and they've really become kind of monopolistic in their general orientation toward who they deal with. This has angered a lot of people. I suspect the right-to-repair in rural Republican areas might be a kind of symbolic issue, representative of much broader anger at Deere.