The political nature of educational governance has been established in other papers dealing with school board elections in states not having partisan election of school board members. The research reported in this paper was conducted in Pennsylvania, a state in which candidates for the school board must declare their party and run on a partisan ticket. This research was conducted to determine the effect of the partisan nature of the elections on the governance of the school district and, more specifically, to study the effect of the partisan nature of the election on encumbent school board member defeat and the turnover of superintendents in districts involved. Analysis of the data revealed that incumbent defeat broadly defined as the defeat of an incumbent in either the primary or general elections is the most accurate predictor of involuntary superintendent turnover. Increased predictive accuracy cannot be obtained by examining any specific category of incumbent defeat. Thus, the findings in previous studies taking place in nonpartisan school board elections were found to be equally applicable in partisan school district politics. (Author/IRT)