The digital army that catapulted Lula to victory in Brazil
By ANA IONOVA, ADAM B. ELLICK and JACK NICAS
It started with a WhatsApp channel with a few thousand followers. It exploded into a digital army of 10 million people that helped swing Latin America’s biggest election.
President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil staged a stunning comeback Sunday, achieving an unexpected victory over Flávio Bolsonaro, the right-wing challenger whose father tried to stage a coup after losing the last election.
In winning, Lula did what no other presidential candidate has accomplished in Brazil’s history — he won election after finishing second in the first round.
His victory rested, to a significant degree, on social media. A tidal wave of messages, memes and reels flooded Brazil, a chronically online nation of 214 million, and rallied millions of Brazilians with diverging views around a single task: barring the return of the Bolsonaro family to power.
Lula’s win delivered a powerful rebuke to a right-wing movement barreling through Latin America that has been applauded by President Donald Trump. It also deals a blow to Washington’s plans for economic and military dominance in the region, extending the reign of the only leader in Latin America — and one of the few globally — who has defied Trump.
Lula won by about double the margin he achieved in 2022, when he narrowly defeated Bolsonaro’s father, Jair Bolsonaro. The achievement is all the more remarkable because Lula, who entered the race as the underdog, received more than 10 million votes between the first and second rounds of the election, or roughly 3 out of every 4 new votes up for grabs Sunday. The younger Bolsonaro captured roughly 4 million additional votes than he did in the first round.
“It was a very big victory for global democracy,” said Christian Lynch, a political scientist at Rio de Janeiro State University. It was driven, he said, by an unprecedented mobilization of Brazilian voters. “We never saw anything like this.”
These votes came from some unexpected sources.
For one, 9 million people voted for minor conservative candidates in the first round. Analysts believe a significant slice of those votes went to Lula rather than Flávio Bolsonaro, defying predictions.
Turnout also increased by nearly 3 million between the first and second rounds, a highly unusual reversal in a country where absenteeism tends to rise after the initial vote. Absenteeism fell to the lowest level of any Brazilian presidential election — another sign that Lula had succeeded in motiving supporters to turn out in big numbers.
Some voters were likely spooked into voting by just how much power Bolsonaro may have had as president, analysts said. With his political party making major strides in the legislature, he would have faced a mostly clear path to rewriting Brazil’s past and reshaping its future.
The elder Bolsonaro was sentenced last year to 27 years in prison for trying to stage a coup after losing the last election to Lula. His son has vowed to seek his amnesty and impeach the justices who jailed him.
Felipe Haurelhuk, 41, started worrying when Flávio Bolsonaro, triumphant after his first-round victory, began talking about rewriting Brazil’s Constitution with the help of his political allies. He decided to cast a ballot for Lula after voting for a different conservative candidate earlier this month.
A digital comeback
Just three weeks ago, a triumph for Lula seemed unfathomable. He had finished 2.2 million votes behind Bolsonaro in the first round of voting, with analysts declaring him on the cusp of defeat.
Then, a charismatic leftist lawmaker from one of Brazil’s most populous states made a fateful rallying cry on a WhatsApp channel. At 6 a.m. the day after Lula’s defeat in the first round, André Janones, the lawmaker, called on his 53,000 followers to get to work. He renamed the channel Lula’s Army.
Around the clock, Janones, in the persona of a digital drill sergeant, would issue “missions” to the swelling number of followers in the channel. Over the next five days, the group grew to 3.4 million.
“Urgent!” he shouted in video and audio messages, ordering supporters to comment, like and share posts favoring Lula on social media. “Go viral!”
The online frenzy to reelect Lula only grew after accusations by his campaign and independent watchdogs that Meta, which owns WhatsApp, was favoring his right-wing rival on its platforms. To try to sidestep the algorithm, Janones and his followers began filming videos wearing Brazil’s yellow jersey — a symbol of the right — and using online tactics usually employed by Bolsonaro’s movement to increase its reach.
The channel, and its head-spinning growth, drew the attention of Bolsonaro and the electoral court. After a judicial arm wrestle between justices on the electoral court, the channel was allowed to stay up. But the court’s chief justice, who was appointed by Jair Bolsonaro, ordered Meta to investigate how it had grown so much. Meta found no irregularities.
Online, Lula’s army of supporters seized on corruption investigations swirling around Flávio Bolsonaro, who has not been charged with a crime. They questioned his past links to figures from Rio’s criminal underworld and his father’s handling of the pandemic. And they warned about the risks of his vague plans to cut public spending, inspired by the austerity measures applied by Argentine President Javier Milei.
“This channel will not spread a single piece of fake news,” Janones ordered his followers. “Those who have the facts have no need for lies!”
Janones’ channel grew exponentially, eventually hitting 10 million subscribers. And just days before the vote, it welcomed a high-profile new member: Lula finally got his first smartphone and joined the channel.
“This was a 20th-century man who, at the very last possible moment, figured out how to run a 21st-century campaign,” Brian Winter, an American political analyst who studies Latin America, said of Lula.
