Billie Eilish and Lady Gaga fans rallied for Brazil's Lula — Variety credited Taylor Swift
Brazil's fandoms spent three weeks dragging a trailing candidate to a historic runoff win. An American trade paper found a way to put Taylor Swift's name on it.
Lula da Silva won Brazil's runoff on October 25, 2026, taking 51.79% of the vote and a fourth term against the far-right Flávio Bolsonaro. The next morning, Variety's write-up ran under the headline "Lula's Election Win: How Taylor's Swift's Advice to Fandom Helped Him to a Historic Victory and Defeat for Trump" — and yes, as published, it says "Taylor's Swift's," an apostrophe error in the name the whole headline is selling.
The grammar is the small problem. The bigger one is what's inside: the article contains no advice from Taylor Swift, no statement from Taylor Swift about Lula, Brazil, or the election, and no action by Taylor Swift of any kind. Her entire presence in the story is one sentence from a São Paulo fan named Josiane, quoted via the Guardian:
"Taylor is always talking about how young people should take the lead."
— Josiane, a São Paulo Swiftie, quoted by the Guardian and recycled by Variety
That's the "advice." A fan's paraphrase of Swift's general interview vibes, from a woman whose last public political act was endorsing Kamala Harris in September 2024.
Who actually did the work
The campaign Variety is describing was real, and it was remarkable. After the October 4 first round, where Flávio Bolsonaro led Lula 47.03% to 45.16% — a 2.2 million vote gap — Brazilian fan-account admins launched a coordinated push for the runoff, offering their followings to the campaign, chasing voters who had skipped or spoiled their first-round ballots. Per the Guardian's count cited in the same Variety piece, more than 600 Brazilian fanbase groups joined; federal deputy André Janones' "Lula's Army" WhatsApp channel grew past 10 million members.
And Variety names the accounts that launched the movement: fan pages for Billie Eilish, Lady Gaga, Katseye, Demi Lovato, Harry Styles, Katy Perry, and Selena Gomez. Swift's fandom is not on the paper's own list. Brazilian outlets like Congresso em Foco tracked a wider coalition where Swiftie pages did take part alongside BTS, Anitta and Beyoncé fandoms — but even there, the organizing came from page admins, with an explicit caveat that none of it implied endorsement by the artists themselves.
Lula, at a São Paulo rally organizers put at over a million people, understood exactly who showed up:
"I'm not sure whether to open this speech with 'comrades' or 'fandoms from all over Brazil.'"
— Lula da Silva, at the São Paulo rally
Lula came back from a 2.2-million-vote first-round deficit, the first candidate in Brazil's democratic history to win a runoff from second place. The name in the headline belongs to a singer who never mentioned the race.
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The fans noticed first
On r/Fauxmoi, the thread about Variety's framing is titled "In a predictable display of American arrogance," and the top comments do the fact-check the headline skipped:
"I must have missed the part where she actually did, said, or directly influenced anything progressive."
— a commenter on r/Fauxmoi
Another went further, calling the piece "such blatant PR" and doubting Swift could place Brazil on a map. Harsh, and note where it's aimed: Swift herself did nothing here, including nothing wrong. The target is a trade paper borrowing her political weight for a story she wasn't in, while the Eilish and Gaga admins who built the thing got the body text.
There's a second name in that headline, and the contrast is instructive. Guillermo del Toro, along with Pedro Almodóvar, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton and Javier Bardem, publicly urged a vote for Lula — an actual, verifiable act by an actual famous person. He got equal billing with a quote from Josiane.
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