How Street Protests and a WhatsApp Army Helped Lula Stage Brazil's Historic Comeback

On the night after Brazil's first-round vote, students from the Fluminense Federal University walked into the streets of Niterói, a city of 480,000 across Guanabara Bay from Rio de Janeiro. They were protesting the prospect of a Bolsonaro returning to power. The family's patriarch, former president Jair Bolsonaro, is under house arrest for attempting a coup, and his son, senator Flávio Bolsonaro, was now the favorite to win.

The mood on the left had been grim. President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva had finished second in that first round, and he reportedly told allies he could not understand how that happened after a government he considered the best of his three terms. Nine million voters had backed other candidates, all of them on the right, and they were expected to move mostly to Flávio Bolsonaro. Analysts widely treated his victory as certain.

Two days after the Niterói march, another student protest took over downtown Rio. Over the following days similar demonstrations spread across the country. Analysts, and Lula himself, agree these organic protests revived the campaign. In his victory speech on Sunday night he thanked the young people who took to the streets to defend democracy.

The result was historic. For the first time in Brazil's democratic history, a candidate who came second in the first round won the runoff. Political scientist Fábio Vasconcellos, of the Representation and Democratic Legitimacy group at the Federal University of Paraná, points to three forces working together: the streets, social media and the machinery of government. In recent weeks Lula approved a package of benefits at the edge of what electoral law permits, including larger and earlier payments from the main cash-transfer programme for poor families. "The streets and social media almost overlap," Vasconcellos said.

The online side ran through a WhatsApp channel called "Lula's Army," created two days after the first round by congressman André Janones, a Lula ally. Janones sent audio messages and videos, often opening with shouts of "Guys, urgent!", along with dozens of daily instructions on making pro-Lula content perform on social media. The channel had 60,000 followers after its first day and more than 10 million by election Sunday. Lula's digital reach overtook Bolsonaro's. Lula called Janones "our general" in his speech. The congressman's pace, which included a 24-hour YouTube livestream on the eve of the vote, put him in hospital last week, the only day the channel went silent.

The campaign also overhauled Lula's own communications. The incumbent, who turns 81 on Tuesday, began recording selfie videos despite not owning a mobile phone. On Sunday night he said he had now been given one and would talk directly to Brazilians many times a day.

The numbers show the scale of the swing. Bolsonaro won 56.1 million votes in the first round and added 3.7 million in the runoff. Lula rose from 53.9 million to 64.2 million, a gain of more than 10 million. That came both from drawing in people who had abstained, at historically high rates, in the first round and from persuading voters who had backed other candidates, Bolsonaro included.

Camila Rocha, a political scientist who studies Brazil's new right and has interviewed undecided voters since May, says the fear of losing rights, and of power concentrating in Bolsonaro's hands, was very clear, so even people who disliked Lula voted for him. Some voters called Bolsonaro a playboy who sided with big business, while also saying unprompted that his victory would bring a dictatorship. Bolsonaro was also caught up in recent controversies, including saying he would use the new, even more conservative congress to change the constitution and "re-democratise" Brazil, and two federal police inquiries into alleged corruption and money laundering.

Many analysts stress Lula himself. Political scientist Helcimara de Souza Telles said that with another candidate, Bolsonaro would already have won in the first round. Campaign manager Marco Aurélio de Carvalho named the president without hesitation, calling him a star player.

The next question is succession, since Lula has said this was his last election. Rocha says his dominance in polling remains strong and no one in his party has comparable leadership. Vasconcellos sees an opening for renewal, with the party learning to connect better with young and urban voters who feel unheard.