Research · No. 4 · The November results, counted · 2026-11-10
Nine in Ten Came Back.
If you voted for school board this month, the winner was probably someone already on the board. Sitting members almost all won another term, and more than half of them had no opponent. Of the ones who drew a challenger, about one in five lost. We read the official results in six states and the District of Columbia.
Who took the seats
1,419 school board seats won on November 3, 2026, in the districts where the whole sitting board is on record. Blue is a member who was already on the board, gold is someone new. The pale end of each color is a seat won with no contest.
Sitting members who won
90%
of the 897 sitting members on the ballot kept their seat. 450 of them had no opponent.
New members, no contest
224
people who were not on their board in October won a seat with no opponent, 36% of all the new members.
What the voters were asked
On November 3, 2026, voters in Georgia, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia filled 1,919 school board seats in 587 districts. For 47% of those seats there was nothing to choose, because the race had no more names than seats. That is about what the candidate filings showed a week before the election.
Most of the people already on a board will still be on it in January. Of the 897 sitting members who ran and whose races are settled, 805 won, 90%. More than half of those winners, 450, had no opponent.
When someone files against them
The other 447 sitting members ran in a race with more names than seats, and 92 of them lost, 21%. The share ran from 17% in Minnesota to 36% in South Carolina.
Sitting members with a challenger
Each bar is every sitting member in a state who ran in a race with more names than seats. Red is the share who lost. States with fewer than ten such members are left off.
The losses were heaviest in suburban districts, where 28% of challenged members lost, against 17% in rural ones. In Robbinsdale, Minnesota, four sitting members ran for four seats and three lost. The largest district in the count where a sitting member was defeated is Cobb County, Georgia, with about 106,000 students. 76 districts will seat at least one person who beat a sitting member.
The new members
614 people who were not on their board in October won a seat, 43% of the seats where we can tell who is new. 390 of them beat at least one other candidate. The other 224 had no opponent.
In 47 districts every seat on the ballot went to a new member. In 79 districts every seat went back to the person who held it.
How close the races were
Most contests for a single seat were not close. The median winner finished 19 points ahead, and 109 of the 231 contests were won by twenty points or more. 33 were decided by fewer than five points and eight by less than one. The closest was in Charleston County, South Carolina, where 48 votes separated first and second out of 13,631 cast. In St. Clair, Minnesota, two candidates finished with 451 votes each for the last of three seats.
Four seats are still open. Some boards in Georgia and South Carolina require a majority, and in those races nobody reached one, so the top two candidates go to a runoff.
Seats nobody filed for
37 seats went to write-in votes, which happens when fewer people file than there are seats to fill. 28 of them are in Minnesota. The state files report write-ins as one combined line, so the results do not yet name the people who will take those seats.
What seven places say about the rest
These places hold 7% of the country's regular school districts and 13% of its students. They are here because each publishes its results in one official source and had counted every precinct by November 10, 2026, not because they stand in for the other states, and nothing on this page is a national figure. Indiana, Maryland and Utah have posted results with counts still open, and Kentucky and Louisiana publish their official files later in November. They will be added as they close.
The nearest outside count is Ballotpedia's review of the elections it covered in 2025, mostly larger districts in 29 states, where sitting members who ran won 84% of the time, against 90% here.
What the count leaves out
The results do not say why any member lost, and turnout is not counted here. 457 winners are in districts where the full sitting board is not on record. They are counted as seats and left out of every figure about sitting and new members. The District of Columbia, part of Georgia, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Virginia had counted every precinct but had not certified when the results were read, so a canvass or recount can still change the closest races.
Method
- Sources. One official results source per state, read on the date shown. District of Columbia: DC Board of Elections, general election results (November 10, 2026). Georgia: Georgia Secretary of State, election results by county (November 10, 2026). Minnesota: Minnesota Secretary of State, results file for school district races (November 10, 2026). North Carolina: North Carolina State Board of Elections, statewide precinct results file (November 10, 2026). Rhode Island: Rhode Island Board of Elections, results by city and town (November 10, 2026). South Carolina: South Carolina Election Commission, state and county results (November 10, 2026). Virginia: Virginia Department of Elections, results by locality (November 10, 2026).
- Which states. A state is counted when its results come from one official statewide source and that source shows every precinct counted. That is Georgia, Minnesota, North Carolina, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Virginia and the District of Columbia. Indiana (769 seats), Maryland (82 seats), Utah (109 seats) are loaded and held back until their counts close.
- Seats. A race is one line on the ballot and can fill several seats, so figures are in seats. A race has no contest when the names on the ballot are no more than the seats it fills, the rule used in post No. 3. Write-in lines are not names.
- Winners. The candidates with the most votes, up to the number of seats, once every precinct is counted. Where a board requires a majority and nobody reached it, the seat is counted as headed to a runoff and has no winner. A tie for the last seat has no winner either.
- Sitting members. A candidate is a sitting member when the official list marks them as the incumbent or their name matches the board roster on record before the election. A candidate is new only when the district's whole board is on record and they are not on it. That covers 79% of contests; winners in the rest are counted as seats with status unknown.
- Universe. The same regular districts as post No. 1, all 13,019 of them, for enrollment and locale. The counted places hold 872 of those districts and 6.1 million students; 587 districts had a regular seat on the November 3 ballot.
- Left out. 32 special elections and unexpired terms. 11 contests whose district the results do not identify. 3 contests in a recount.
- Not measured. Turnout, why any candidate won or lost, and whether a new board is a better one. No state, board or candidate is ranked.
Every figure on this page is computed from the School Boar database and the sources named above, and the queries and counts behind it are available on request.
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