On that day, right-wing outsider candidate Jair Bolsonaro defeated leftist Fernando Haddad and was elected President of Brazil.

Narrowly re-elected in 2014,[2] President Dilma Rousseff of the centre-left Workers’ Party (PT), which had dominated Brazilian politics since 2002, was impeached in 2016.

[3] Replacing her was her Vice President, Michel Temer of the centre-right Brazilian Democratic Movement Party.

[4] Temer, whose age of 75 at inauguration made him the oldest to ever take office, broke sharply with his predecessor's policies and amended the constitution to freeze public spending.

[8] The candidacy of Jair Bolsonaro, a controversial federal deputy from Rio de Janeiro known for his far-right politics[9][10][11][12] and defense of the former Brazilian military dictatorship,[13][9][14] overshadowed other conservative candidates.

[18][19] Bolsonaro benefited from opposition to the former PT government and ran in favor of expanding gun ownership in response to high crime,[20] legalizing the death penalty,[21] and the privatization of state-owned companies.

[22][23] For the position of Vice President, Bolsonaro chose Hamilton Mourão, a conservative retired general in the Brazilian Army.

[37] His major opponent on the left was Ciro Gomes, a mainstay of Brazilian politics who ran a centre-left campaign as a member of the Democratic Labour Party (PDT).

[46][47] On 31 August 2016, the Senate voted 61–20 in favor of impeachment, finding Rousseff guilty of breaking budgetary laws and removing her from office.

His government implemented policies that contradicted the platform on which Rousseff's Workers Party had been elected, in one of the most controversial and heated political periods of modern Brazilian history.

The Chamber elections are held using open list proportional representation, with seats allocated using the simple quotient.

[62] On 1 September, the Superior Electoral Court voted 6–1 to reject Lula's candidacy for what would be his third term based on the Lei da Ficha Limpa and his conviction on corruption charges, but approved the PT-PCdoB-PROS coalition "The People Happy Again" and the candidacy of Fernando Haddad.

[119] The Workers' Party replaced Lula with Haddad and announced former presidential candidate Manuela d'Ávila as his running mate.

[120] Jair Bolsonaro was stabbed on 6 September 2018 while campaigning in the city of Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais and interacting with supporters.

He also stated that Bolsonaro had lost a large amount of blood, arriving at the hospital with a pressure of 10/3, but had since stabilized.

[127] Two debates were held on 9 and 17 August, featuring eight presidential candidates: Bolsonaro, Alckmin, Silva, Gomes, Dias, Meirelles, Boulos, and Daciolo.