Presidential elections were held in Venezuela on 6 December 1998. The main candidates were Hugo Chávez, a career military officer who led a coup d'état against then-president Carlos Andrés Pérez in 1992; and former Carabobo Governor Henrique Salas Römer. Both candidates represented newly formed parties, a first in a country where the main candidates always represented the parties of the bipartisanship. Chávez represented the Fifth Republic Movement (MVR), while Salas Römer represented Project Venezuela. Initially weak in the polls, Chávez ran on an anti-corruption and anti-poverty platform, condemning the two major parties that had dominated Venezuelan politics since 1958; and began to gain ground in the polls after the previous front runners faded. Despite the fact that the major parties (Copei and Democratic Action) endorsed Salas Römer, Chávez was elected into his first term as President of Venezuela.
A political realignment, the result meant the end of the bipartisanship that had dominated the political atmosphere of the country in the last 40 years, and the beginning of the dominance of the new MVR party (later merged into the United Socialist Party of Venezuela) and the Bolivarian Revolution, system that still holds political power in Venezuela as of August 2024.