General elections were held in Lesotho on 24 May 1998, except in the Moyeni constituency, where voting was postponed until 1 August due to the death of one of the candidates. The result was a comprehensive victory for the new Lesotho Congress for Democracy, which claimed 79 of the 80 seats. The party was formed by a breakaway from the Basutoland Congress Party, which had won the 1993 elections.
Of the 1,017,753 registered voters, there were 593,955 valid votes.
The Basotho National Party is a political party in Lesotho, founded in 1959 in colonial Basutoland as the Basutoland National Party by Leabua Jonathan. He was Prime Minister from the 1965 general election until the 1986 coup d'état.
In the 1993 general election, the BNP received almost 23% of the vote but did not win any seats in the National Assembly, with all 65 seats going to the party's rival, the Basutoland Congress Party (BCP). It suffered a similar defeat in the 1998 general election, in which it won 24.5% of the vote but only one seat in the National Assembly. Due to its lack of success in winning constituencies, the party sought the introduction of proportional representation in deciding the allocation of seats; as a compromise, a mixed system providing for 40 compensatory seats that would be decided through proportional representation (in addition to the 80 constituency seats) was introduced.