Lula wins Brazil runoff 51.7% to 48.2% as WhatsApp channel mobilizes millions

A comeback in the runoff

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won Brazil's presidential runoff on Sunday, 25 October 2026, taking 51.7% of valid votes against 48.2% for Flávio Bolsonaro. El País puts his lead at more than 4.4 million votes, three weeks after he had lost the first round by 2.2 million votes. According to El País, no candidate had achieved such a comeback in Brazil before. Lula addressed supporters from a stage on Avenida Paulista in São Paulo, and LaSexta reported hundreds of thousands of people in the streets celebrating. Flávio Bolsonaro has not recognised the results, LaSexta said.

Lula da Silva51.7

Flávio Bolsonaro48.2

Lula da Silva

51.7 % of valid votes

Flávio Bolsonaro

48.2 % of valid votes

Data from the article text

How the WhatsApp channel grew

The turnaround is credited in part to 'Lula's Army', a WhatsApp channel that André Janones, a federal deputy for Minas Gerais and a lawyer, set up after the first round. BBC reported that the channel grew quickly to 10.8 million followers, while El País said Janones had mobilized nearly 11 million Brazilians over three weeks, and LaSexta and JN put the figure above 10 million. Messages came with ready-made templates for sharing with friends and family, and followers were told to share videos, spread hashtags and push new campaign clips up the feeds. El Confidencial reported an order to post a photo in the Brazilian national team shirt, making an 'L' with the fingers, at the same hour, a way of working around platform algorithms. Before the vote, Janones ran a 24-hour livestream that BBC called the 'comeback livestream', held even though polls still showed Bolsonaro winning. On stage, Lula thanked Janones and called him his 'general'.

Meta and the platforms

The campaign also clashed with Meta. El País, citing an investigation by the NGO NetLab, reports that Meta suspended the campaign's Instagram ad account during the race and charged Lula's candidacy 33% to 43% more. According to El País, Meta attributed the problems to technical issues. LaSexta reported that Lula's team flagged the company for silencing his content, and that the Superior Electoral Court (TSE) found Meta had favoured the visibility of Bolsonaro's content and ordered equal treatment. El País also cites research by Ctrl+Z and Artigo 19 on influencer Nikolas Carreira, whose videos reached over 160 million views, with 12 to 17 times fewer followers than Beyoncé, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi or Kim Kardashian. The same report says Flávio Bolsonaro's profile, with 17.2% fewer followers, drew almost three times more interactions per post. JN reports that Janones's channel was suspended after a complaint by Flávio Bolsonaro's campaign alleging disinformation, but a technical report found no evidence for what was alleged, and the PT questioned the difference in treatment with a similar channel.

Style, insults and a fan movement

Inside the Workers' Party, some figures feared Janones's combative style could damage the moderate image Lula wanted to project, according to BBC and JN. On El Intermedio, presenter Sandra Sabatés described his approach as copying the far right, citing vertical content, alarming headlines and plain language. During the last televised debate, Flávio Bolsonaro called Lula 'nine fingers', an insult the far right uses often. Lula replied that he had lost a finger at 17 while working nights, and Bolsonaro apologised to him on air, according to eldiario.es. A separate movement, 'Gostosos com Lula', mixed politics with shirtless gym-built supporters under the hashtag #GostososcomLula, led by Israel Augusto, who has nearly 400,000 Instagram followers, El País reported.

What comes next

Lula said he was already learning to work with Janones, whom he credited with lifting the morale of his supporters morning, afternoon and night, according to El País. He asked the campaign army not to disband. Flávio Bolsonaro's refusal to recognise the outcome was still in place when LaSexta reported on the result.