Question

The following data come from the 2016 ANES, V36 and V87W, both recoded into 3 categories. One question asked about party identification. The other asked about support for building a wall on the border between the United States and Mexico.  The results were as follows:

Partisanship	Oppose	Not sure	Favor
Democrat	620	217	199
Independent	401	327	602
Republican	155	218	874
Total	1176	762	1675

Calculate appropriate percentages for the table, justify your choice of row, column, or total percentages, and comment on the relationship.

Answer 1

I am first creating an extra column Total (sum of row totals).

Partisanship	Oppose	Not sure	Favor	Total
Democrat	620	217	199	1036
Independent	401	327	602	1330
Republican	155	218	874	1247
Total	1176	762	1675	3613

Now, we shall create 3 percentage tables(each of them showing different percentage values) and define what each percentage represents.

1.

Partisanship	Oppose	Not sure	Favor	Total
Democrat	17.16025464	6.006089123	5.507888182	28.67423194
Independent	11.09880985	9.050650429	16.66205369	36.81151398
Republican	4.290063659	6.033766953	24.19042347	34.51425408
Total	32.54912815	21.0905065	46.36036535	100

This table gives the percentage of each of the values in total population. Each of the values in the table are obtained by dividing them by the total number, 3613. For example, the value in bold ie, 17.16025464 is the percentage of people (out of total of 3613 people) who are democrat and oppose the building of wall. Similar is the argument for each of the values.

2.

Partisanship	Oppose	Not sure	Favor	Total
Democrat	59.84556	20.9459459	19.2085	100
Independent	30.150376	24.5864662	45.2632	100
Republican	12.429832	17.4819567	70.0882	100

This table is obtained by dividing each value by the row total multiplied by 100. This gives the percentage value of each category of partianship in the population. For example, the value that is in bold(24.5865) is the percentage of independent people in the population, taking the partisanship of people into consideration.

3.

Partisanship	Oppose	Not sure	Favor
Democrat	52.72108844	28.47769029	11.88059701
Independent	34.09863946	42.91338583	35.94029851
Republican	13.18027211	28.60892388	52.17910448
Total	100	100	100

This table is obtained by dividing each value by the column total multiplied by 100. This gives the percentage value of each category of people with the views on building the wall in the population. For example, the value that is in bold(52.17910448) is the percentage of people who favor building the wall in the population, taking the opinion of people into consideration.