How many Unitarians and how many Universalists were there before the merger?
From the pre-merger directories, it's clear that the Unitarians and the Universalists did statistics differently. Here is a set of numbers that might be more evenly compared. This is from a report of the Joint Merger Commission dated Apr. 22, 1960, sent “To all churches, fellowships." It lists all the congregations eligible to vote (in other words, no “ghost” or dormant ones) and the legal membership of each unit (as determined by the UCA & AUA). It records their vote on the Final Plebiscite in Consolidation. There are no statistics for a few of the units. It looks like the way they counted the membership of some of the federated units (e.g., Nashua, Portsmouth, Brattleboro) was to put the same number in both the Universalist and the Unitarian sections, so those numbers are doubled (e.g., Portsmouth has 241 in the Universalist “yes” section and 241 in the Unitarian “yes” section; in the 1961-62 UUA directory, they have 253 members). So they’re not perfect statistics, but at least they are numbers agreed upon by both the AUA & UCA. I’ve included the yes, no, and not voting numbers as well.
| Yes Vote | Membership | No Vote | Membership | Not Participating | Membership | Total Units | Total Membership | |
| Unitarian Churches | 327 | 96,120 | 37 | 10,344 | 18 | 3,275 | 382 | 109,739 |
| Unitarian Fellowships | 228 | 8,701 | 17 | 647 | 24 | 482 | 269 | 9,830 |
| Total Unitarian | 555 | 104,821 | 54 | 10,991 | 42 | 3,757 | 651 | 119,569 |
| Universalist Units | 183 | 28,922 | 49 | 6,533 | 12 | 1,409 | 244 | 36,864 |
| Total U & U | 738 | 133,743 | 103 | 17,524 | 54 | 5,166 | 895 | 156,433 |
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