A survey conducted by the UTSA Center for Public Opinion Research suggests San Antonio residents are tepid about plans for a new sports complex for the San Antonio Spurs — a project that city and county leaders have been quietly discussing.
The survey indicated 41% of voters said they would not be in favor of a new Spurs arena moving to downtown San Antonio, 36% said they were in favor, almost 12% had no opinion and about 11% were not sure.
“The biggest concerns have to do with the funding of the new Spurs arena, and concern about taxpayers paying for it, and also traffic and construction came up,” said Bryan Gervais, the center’s director and an associate professor in UTSA’s Department of Political Science and Geography.
The results were more favorable for the new minor league baseball stadium for the San Antonio Missions in Northwest downtown, which the city and county both signed off on in recent weeks. About 40% of voters said they would be in favor of this move, compared to 35% who said they would not.
It’s the first publicly released data from the new UTSA polling center, which launched at the beginning of the year to address the lack of public polling in the 7th largest U.S. city.
This survey interviewed 692 registered voters and has a +/- 3.7% margin of error. It was conducted from Sept. 11 to Sept. 16 — just days after the presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Gervais told reporters that as of Monday, the center has been certified by the American Association for Public Opinion Researchers.
That means the center met industry standards for methodology, transparency, question wording, sample selection and data analytics, he said.
“This is sort of the industry standard. All the big polling centers want to get this certification,” Gervais said.
The center will release another batch of data in late October.
Political insights
The survey tested the 2024 presidential race and found Vice President Kamala Harris (D) taking 53.4% and former President Donald Trump (R) taking 34.8% in deep blue Bexar County. Support for Harris was much higher than it was for President Joe Biden when UTSA conducted the same survey in June.
In 2020, Trump took 40% of the vote here, compared to Biden’s 48%.
“We see evidence of support for Democrat candidates surging among Bexar County voters, up and down the ballot,” Gervais said.
In the U.S. Senate race, Republican Ted Cruz (R) was taking 29.1% to Democrat Colin Allred’s (D) 44%. Statewide polling in this race has shown Cruz up between 3 and 5 percentage points in recent weeks.
Also on the November ballot, the survey asked about proposed amendments to the San Antonio City Charter, such as pay increases and longer terms for the council.
Results varied between the various proposals, but more than 80% of voters were still unfamiliar with them.
2025 Mayoral Race
UTSA also tested the 2025 mayoral race, but only included responses who indicated they plan to vote in that election.
Councilman John Courage (D9) led the pack, with 9% support, but 42.5% of respondents weren’t familiar with any of the candidates.
“We’d say this race is still probably wide open in that many people don’t have their minds made up or aren’t really paying attention to this race at this point in time,” Gervais said.
