Workers’ Party Candidate Targets Abstentionists With Social Media Push.

On Wednesday, Brazilian President and re-election candidate Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva changed his digital strategy ahead of the runoff election to reverse Sunday’s result, which left him 2.2 million votes behind far-right candidate Flavio Bolsonaro.

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“People, let’s go to the street. Let’s talk with people,” the Workers’ Party leader says in an unusual selfie video he posted Wednesday on his social networks.

In another of his posts, Lula challenges the far-right candidate with a proposal to reduce the workweek to five days of work and two of rest. Lula’s proposal began to be debated this week in the Senate.

“I want to know how Flavio Bolsonaro is going to vote. I want to know how he is going to direct the vote of his parliamentary group,” he says, while holding his phone with one hand and gesturing with the other, something unprecedented until now.

On Tuesday, first lady Rosangela da Silva also joined the initiative with a selfie video in which she says the campaign is “in full steam on the networks and in the streets.”

This new dynamic represents a change in the digital strategy of the Workers’ Party campaign, which until now had focused on reposting material from Lula’s speeches in institutional settings, without the president having “direct contact” with his followers.

Lula’s advertising team has held meetings to strengthen communication with young lawmakers with high digital impact and influencers who speak “face to face” to voters about the advantages of voting for the progressive leader and the dangers of electing his adversary.

For example, Representative Erika Hilton, with more than 5 million followers on Instagram and re-elected in Sunday’s legislative elections, and Representative Pedro Rousseff, grand-nephew of former President Dilma Rousseff, with more than 1 million, have accompanied this change in format.

“Lula is going to lose the election if we don’t change these four points of his campaign,” Rousseff warns, placing social networks as the first point to correct, even ahead of publicizing proposals on security.

Recebendo o reforço da tropa de deputadas e deputados jovens eleitos.

Vamos com tudo conquistar voto pro 1️⃣3️⃣!⭐️ pic.twitter.com/a66jsScMsU

— Lula (@LulaOficial) October 7, 2026

Lula da Silva’s text reads, “Getting a boost from the team of newly elected young lawmakers. We’re going all out to win votes for the 13!”

The Objective Is to Seduce Abstentionists

One of the main objectives of the strategy change is to improve the president’s result in the state of Minas Gerais, the country’s second-largest electoral college after São Paulo, where Lula totaled 43% of the votes against 48% for Bolsonaro.

Among the municipalities with the highest abstention rates, this Brazilian state concentrates eight of the country’s top ten.

At the start of the runoff campaign, Lula has focused precisely on reducing abstention, within a context in which several of the candidates of the so-called “third way” and political parties defeated in the first round have decided to align with the Liberal Party (PL) candidate.

Therefore, in the operational organization of the campaign, one of the drivers of this tactical shift is Andre Janones, a representative from Minas Gerais and re-elected in last Sunday’s elections.

Janones has created a broadcast channel on WhatsApp called “Lula’s Army,” which already has nearly 2 million followers.

In that space he uploads videos and asks supporters to share the posts, “like” them and generate their own content with established slogans. “We are the soldiers who are going to re-elect Lula,” he says in his messages.

teleSUR/ JF

Source: EFE

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