Janones surges on Instagram and rivals Nikolas Ferreira in engagement

André Janones (Rede-MG) gained around 6.4 million Instagram followers between June and October 28, three days after President Lula's reelection.

His account grew from 2.75 million to 9.2 million followers, the largest absolute gain among the five federal lawmakers analyzed by Jogometria.

That is nearly three times the gain recorded by Nikolas Ferreira (PL-MG), the most-voted federal lawmaker in Brazil's history, who added 2.2 million over the period. Janones gained more followers than Nikolas, Erika Hilton (PSOL-SP) and Guilherme Cortez (PSOL-SP) combined.

The growth coincides with Janones' role in Lula's (PT) campaign. He led Exército do Lula (Lula's Army), a WhatsApp channel that surpassed 10 million participants during the runoff.

During the race, Quaest's intelligence director, Guilherme Russo, said the mobilization led by the lawmaker had changed the dynamics of the election.

Lula, who finished the first round behind Flávio Bolsonaro (PL), won with 51.79% of valid votes.

The largest gain among the lawmakers analyzed

Janones was not alone in gaining followers. The runoff boosted the accounts of several left-wing lawmakers who joined Lula's campaign.

In proportional terms, Ana Elisa (PT-MG) and Guilherme Cortez grew even more than Janones: their follower counts nearly quadrupled. In absolute numbers, however, no one came close to him.

Erika Hilton, the woman with the most votes in the history of Brazil's lower house, provides a counterexample. She entered the campaign with 4.87 million followers and ended it with 5.12 million, a 5% increase.

Nearly half in the final week

Janones' follower gains were concentrated in the final stretch of the runoff. Of the 6.4 million new followers, around 2.9 million arrived between October 21 and 28, an average of more than 400,000 a day.

The surge coincides with the most intense phase of Exército do Lula, which Janones promotes in his Instagram bio. The channel grew from 5 million participants on October 17 to 7.4 million on October 21, according to figures from Prensa Mercosur and Mobile Time.

That same week, Janones was hospitalized for cardiac arrhythmia, from October 18 to 20.

Nikolas followed a similar path on the other side of the race with the Tropa do Flávio (Flávio's Troops) channel, which had 2.1 million participants on October 21, less than a third of Janones' channel.

Followers who engage

When an account grows rapidly, engagement usually falls: new followers arrive who are not yet seeing its posts in their feeds. With Janones, the opposite happened.

A typical post of his generated around 62,000 likes and comments in June; in October, that figure exceeded 1.5 million, roughly 25 times as many.

Besides boosting Lula's campaign, the lawmaker seized the moment and rode the wave to improve his own engagement, often using his account to communicate with people involved in the campaign.

In June, a Janones post generated 6% as many interactions as a Nikolas post. In October, 62%.

The same comparison applies to the other lawmakers whose accounts grew. Cortez, whose follower count nearly quadrupled, totaled around 3.6 million likes in October, about one-thirteenth of Janones' total.

In comments, Janones even surpasses Nikolas. His typical post receives 258,100 comments, compared with 133,200 for his PL colleague. For every 100 likes, Janones' posts receive around 20 comments, versus 5.5 for Nikolas.

An audience still rooted in Minas Gerais

Both Nikolas and Janones were elected in Minas Gerais, but only Janones has Minas as his audience's leading state of origin. Among sampled followers with location data, 41.2% of his are in Minas Gerais.

São Paulo is Nikolas' leading state, with 21.5%, ahead of Minas Gerais (18.6%) and Rio de Janeiro (16.2%). One in three of his followers is outside the five leading states on the list. For Janones, fewer than one in five are.

In practice, Nikolas' social media audience is better suited to a national political project built through social media: 81.4% of his followers are outside Minas Gerais, compared with 58.8% of Janones'. To turn his digital reach into national prominence, Janones still needs to spread his follower base more widely across the country.

Who follows him and when he posts

Janones' audience is more female and older than Nikolas'. Women account for 57.9% of his sample, compared with 44.9% of Nikolas'. Nearly half of Janones' followers (47%) are 35 or older; among Nikolas' followers, the figure is 32.2%.

The youngest age groups show the largest gap. Only 7.9% of Janones' followers are aged 13 to 24, compared with 24.4% of Nikolas'.

Their posting patterns also differ. Janones spreads his posts across the day and week: 38.6% appear on Saturdays or Sundays, and 19% between midnight and 4 a.m. Nikolas publishes 54.5% of his posts between 8 p.m. and midnight.

Followers who have yet to become votes

Janones' online reach did not translate into votes for him personally. He was reelected with 78,777 votes, down from 238,967 in 2022, and fell from second to 38th among Minas Gerais' most-voted federal candidates.

Ana Elisa, who ran for the same office in the same state, received 524,219 votes and ranked second.

Part of the mismatch comes down to timing. At least 2.9 million of Janones' new followers arrived after October 21, more than two weeks after the vote that reelected him, when he was already campaigning for Lula.

The numbers suggest two paths for his next term. One is to expand his audience beyond Minas Gerais, as Nikolas has already done, and become a national figure. The other is to turn into political strength a follower base that is currently growing and engaging the most among the lawmakers analyzed.

There is also a limit to reach within his own follower base. According to the platform, 36.4% of Janones' followers follow more than 1,500 accounts, reducing their chances of seeing his posts. For Nikolas, the share is 31%.