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Method and limits
Every record here carries a confidence level, and the confidence level is the most important field on it. The College Republican movement split after a disputed 2021 national election; the surviving national bodies publish competing, undated and partly fictional rosters of the same states, and a dead federation can look alive from a search-results page for years. Reported, inferred and merely announced are three different claims and are labeled separately everywhere on this page.
The six jurisdictions marked nothing functioning are not organizations. They are places where the test below found none. Functioning test: a named officer in a current listing, or activity dated since 29 August 2025.
The functioning test, stated exactly: a named officer in a current listing, or activity dated since 29 August 2025. Everything below either passes it or is marked as failing it.
National bodies are held to one thing more: units. A national organization is counted only if something below it can be found — a charter list, a chapter roster, or a filing. That is what separates the three in the count from the fourth, and it is stated here because the fourth passes the test above. College Republicans of America publishes 242 chapter entries and files with the FEC through 30 June 2026. The National Federation publishes a twenty-four entry charter list. The CRNC publishes no roster at all — its find-a-chapter page is a contact form — and is held in on its 527 filings through 31 December 2025 and a chairman named in dated press. College Republicans United clears the functioning test on a 23 October 2025 tabling at Arizona State and a chairman named in October 2025 press, and is still outside the count: no filing, no charter list, no roster, and the one chapter that can be observed is not a registered student organization. The first test asks whether anyone is acting in the name. The second asks whether there is an organization underneath. Both are stated so a reader who rejects the second can still use the first.
A list of members is not the same thing as units of its own. The College Republican Patriot Coalition, added 20 September 2026, passes the functioning test on a 26 January 2026 statement signed by 29 groups. Every statewide signatory that this map can match already sits under another national body or under none, and the coalition charters nothing, files nothing and names no officer. It is recorded as a coalition that chapters join alongside their national affiliation, not as a fifth body competing to charter them.
A correction, 15 September 2026. The national-bodies entry for College Republicans United said its last real-world action was January 2025. It was 23 October 2025 — nine months of activity this page had missed, in a group it had already called not functioning. The verdict survived the correction, but only because the reason for it was restated: it had been resting on silence that turned out not to be silence. The three counted bodies are re-checked on the same footing.
Social media mostly could not be read. Instagram, X and Facebook were blocked on every automated attempt, and for organizations with dead websites those are likely the only channel. A 31 August browser pass, below, read four accounts first-hand; every other account remains unread, and the nothing functioning verdict rests partly on absence from channels these groups do not use.
This method has already produced false negatives. Two states — Utah and Wisconsin — were classified as having nothing before a later pass found functioning federations, each visible in only one obscure source. The first edition of this page said to assume its 19 empty states were too many rather than too few. That was correct.
A 31 August 2026 audit re-checked the empty states and the national bodies. Five states — Missouri, Massachusetts, New York, South Carolina and Tennessee — moved out of the empty column on campus-chapter evidence with named officers in dated press, most of it from a single news cycle in mid-September 2025. Idaho's statewide organization surfaced in its party's current auxiliary listing, the national committee's leadership change reached print and firmed up its record, and the Florida chapter suit's dismissal was recorded. That left fourteen in the empty column.
A browser pass later that day read the blocked channels first-hand. Social accounts and campus club portals that automated fetching could not render were opened in a full browser. Three more states moved. Vermont: campus-paper coverage of the revived Middlebury chapter, active through May 2026. New Hampshire: the federation’s own thirteen-year-old X account, publishing county-by-county endorsement slates for the September 2026 primary four days before this audit. Nevada: UNLV’s club portal, rendering a named president and a dated event history where every automated read had shown nothing. The same pass produced negatives that are also findings — Montana’s one chapter shell last posted in fall 2022, Oregon State’s account in February 2020, and Arkansas’s university club directory lists no Republican student group at all. That left eleven in the empty column.
A 20 September 2026 campus pass went through those eleven. It read university club directories and campus papers school by school, because the national rosters have almost nothing to say about these states. Five moved on campus evidence inside the window: Arkansas on the Arkansas Tech chapter, Colorado on Colorado Mesa and UCCS, Kansas on Pittsburg State, Fort Hays State and Washburn, New Mexico on New Mexico State, and Washington on the Whitman Republican Club and the Washington State chapter. None of the Arkansas, Colorado, New Mexico or Washington clubs is on a national roster, and neither is Fort Hays State, which is how they were missed. Oregon is held: a University of Oregon chapter appears active through November 2025, but only on channels this page could not read first-hand. Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Wyoming and West Virginia were checked the same way and stay empty. The six empty states that remain should still be assumed somewhat too many.
The three national bodies' own sites were read in full on 31 August 2026. College Republicans of America publishes per-state chapter rosters — 33 state pages, 242 chapter entries, three of them duplicates — and each state record below reproduces its list verbatim, spelling errors included. The CRNC's site publishes no state-level roster of any kind; its find-a-chapter page is a contact form. The National Federation's charter page is twenty-four unlinked logo tiles. Every figure from these sites is a self-reported claim and is labeled as one.
Websites and social accounts are linked as pointers, not citations. The social-media limitation above stands for all but the four accounts the browser pass read first-hand, each dated in its state’s record; every published handle carries an attribution chain — the organization's own site, its state party's listing, or press. Dead, frozen and maintenance-mode sites are flagged rather than linked.
Chapter-level links were added the same day. Each of the 206 campus chapters linked in the state records traces to a chapter page on its state federation’s or College Republicans of America’s own site, a university club directory, campus or local press, or a handle whose name unmistakably identifies the campus club. They are pointers on the same terms as everything above — no account was read as evidence of activity, several are visibly dormant, and relic pages from past decades were left unlinked. Fifteen chapters documented in the records but absent from every national roster are marked with a dagger.
Wikipedia-derived claims were excluded. Two widely repeated ones did not survive checking: Colorado's supposed 2022 expulsion from the CRNC and North Dakota's supposed 2021 departure. Both trace only to Wikipedia. Mississippi's departure, by contrast, is confirmed.
On the eight states whose charter is claimed but unverified: College Republicans of America says this federation affiliated on 4 July 2025 “by unanimous vote of” its state convention, held some time in June 2025. That would mean a real convention — but the claim is self-reported, no date or place is given, and nothing independent documents it. It is kept because the body making the claim still functions; it is not counted as proven.
Reading the map — status. Shaded by what is documented about each state federation, strongest evidence first. Rank 4 sits out of that order deliberately: it is a claim rather than a finding, kept beside the documented ranks because the body making it still functions. Ranks 3, 4 and 6 carry a texture as well as a color, so evidence strength survives grayscale and print.
Reported in press · 4A news outlet reported this federation’s activity in the past tense — the strongest evidence on the map.
Active, indirect evidence · 5No direct report, but a listing closed or a new chair was seated.
Announced, unconfirmed · 2A page announced activity. Nothing confirms it took place.
Charter claimed, unverified · 8A national body says this federation was chartered by a state vote in June 2025. Self-reported, undated, uncorroborated.
Federation functioning · 9A named officer or dated activity, and nothing stronger.
Chapters only, no functioning federation · 17Live campus chapters, no functioning state federation above them. The largest category.
Nothing functioning · 6Obsolete or never existed.
Reading the map — affiliation. The second view shades each state by which national body claims it. The crosshatched states are claimed by two bodies at once — the clearest evidence that the rosters are unreliable.
College Republicans of America · 19College Republicans of America names the state federation as chartered (9 states), or lists campus chapters here on its own state page with no federation under them (10 states). The state’s card says which.
National Federation · 10It appears on the National Federation of College Republicans’ own published charter list — a logo grid with no names, chairs, links or dates — and a federation or campus chapters here are independently shown to function.
Claimed by both · 11It appears on the National Federation’s own charter list and is claimed by College Republicans of America at the same time, at federation or chapter level. Neither claim is corroborated from the state’s own side.
No national body · 5Its only documented affiliation is to its own state Republican party, or none is stated anywhere. No national body claims it in a primary source.
Nothing functioning · 6Nothing here functions, so there is nothing to affiliate. Where a national roster still carries this state, that entry is a claim by the roster’s owner and is recorded in the state’s note rather than shown as an affiliation.
CRPC signatory · 15A statewide group or a campus chapter here signed the College Republican Patriot Coalition’s 26 January 2026 statement. On the map this color takes the place of the national affiliation; the state’s card still gives it, and the counts above still include it.
