Brasilia, Aug. 26, 2026 (Lusa) – Brazil's First Lady, Rosângela (Janja) da Silva, has stepped up the Workers' Party's (PT) outreach to evangelicals, as part of a strategy to build support for Lula da Silva and win over these voters in the general election.
The First Lady's efforts come at a time when polls on voting intentions for the October elections indicate that Lula's opponent, Flávio Bolsonaro, enjoys greater popularity amongst evangelicals.
«In recent years, the First Lady has been listening to evangelical women. She has this sensitivity, and is also committed to combating femicide, harassment and violence against women,» the PT's national interfaith coordinator, Gutierres Barbosa, told Lusa.
A Datafolha poll published last Friday shows that Flávio Bolsonaro has a 62% approval rating amongst evangelicals, whilst Lula has 29%.
In July, the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro stood at 60%, compared with 31% for Lula.
Against this backdrop, Janja da Silva recorded a video shown to 200 pastors at the launch of the «Evangelicals with Lula» campaign committee, in which she linked the Brazilian president's administration to respect for and protection of the faithful within that religious community.
In the video, she states that the values of solidarity and equality that have «always guided» Lula da Silva's life and administrations «are important guiding principles of the Christian faith».
She added that «looking after a people means looking after what they believe in most», citing achievements of the PT government, such as the establishment of Evangelical Day, National March for Jesus Day and National Gospel Music Day.
The First Lady's involvement in her husband's campaign, especially in reaching out to evangelicals, marks a shift in stance for Janja da Silva and the PT compared to the 2022 election campaign, when she maintained a more distant role from Lula's events targeting this demographic.
In that election, Lula even published an open letter to evangelicals, after allies persuaded him that it was important to make a gesture of outreach towards them.
According to Gutierres Barbosa, who is also vice-president of the Nazaré Baptist Church (Salvador, in the state of Bahia), Janja da Silva can engage and win over evangelical women through shared values of «concern for Brazil».
«From the symbolism of women within the family to female empowerment, (…) Janja gives women a platform and a voice. So, evangelical women also see themselves reflected in the First Lady,» he added.
At Lula's first campaign event, on 16 August, Janja appeared singing, alongside a pastor, a gospel song whose chorus extols the life of the left-wing politician.
The 2022 demographic census by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics reveals that one in four Brazilians identified as evangelical, representing 47.4 million people, or 26.9% of the Brazilian population.
This figure represents a threefold increase compared with the 1991 census, when Protestants accounted for 9% of the country's population.
Gutierres Barbosa believes that, up until the 2014 general election, the majority of Protestants voted for the PT, but that the party has been affected by the rise of conservatism over the last decade.
Examples of evangelicals moving toward other political options include the 2016 impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff and Lula's 2018 imprisonment in the wake of the Lava Jato investigations.
According to the leader, the PT has a long-standing relationship with this group and has more than 500,000 evangelical members, as well as 500 councillors among the party's representatives in local councils across Brazil.
«We have a relationship with the evangelical community that goes back a long way. We are working for electoral purposes, and we are concerned about Brazil,» he declared.
According to Gutierres, evangelicals aligned with Lula will play a key role in «combating misinformation, such as the claim that the PT will close churches» and that it will «prevent evangelicals from holding services».
«It is President Lula who safeguards social rights for families,» said Gutierres, in a critique of the «God, Country and Family» rhetoric, a slogan associated with Bolsonarism.
MYMA/ADB // ADB.
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