She is the Brazilian woman to have received the third highest voting in a presidential race, ranking behind Marina Silva and Dilma Rousseff in 2010.

Thus, in 2003 she voted against the overhaul of public servants' pensions[2] carried out in the first term of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and, as a result, was expelled from the party.

After PT's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the presidency in 2002, Heloísa became one of the strongest critics of the new government's alignment with centrist politics.

(In reality, PSOL only declared "critical support" of Rousseff, stating that it only chose to do so in order to secure the defeat of "right-wing" candidate José Serra in the general elections, and that it would continue to oppose the centrist[citation needed] PT government; many members of the party, including defeated presidential candidate Plínio de Arruda Sampaio, chose to annul their vote, refusing to support Rousseff.)

Despite leading the polls for a considerable amount of time, she got 417,636 votes (16.6% of the total), finishing the race in third, behind Benedito de Lira and Renan Calheiros.