And now some pollsters, including an independent one, believe that Harris' failure to show up for a televised mayoral debate set off events that have left him in a precarious position.

"Personally, I think it cost him," said Jack Seigle, Morgado's chief political strategist. "It was perhaps the difference between him taking it all and now going into a general election."

"I think it cost him (an outright win in) the primary," said Harris pollster Don Clegg. "I would guess about 10 percentage points because I had him up that high."

The final count had Harris with 49.3 percent of those voting for a candidate in the race. Morgado had 29.2 percent while former Mayor Frank Fasi had 20.1 percent.

Harris needed 50 percent plus one vote to have won outright and avoided the runoff.

Last Wednesday night, Harris refused to participate in a KHON-TV debate that featured Morgado and Fasi. Immediately afterward, the station aired a live, nine-minute interview between news anchor Joe Moore and Harris, who was sitting behind his Honolulu Hale desk.

Hundreds of callers flooded the station that night and the next morning complaining that it had been unfair and given Harris favorable treatment. The station management defended its move, but allowed both Morgado and Fasi live air time the next night.

"I can't think of any other event that happened (that may have caused the slippage)," Clegg said. "But that's the kind of event that can't happen again."

Clegg and Jim Loomis, Harris' chief campaign strategist, said they don't view the runoff as a major setback.

Clegg said: "No doubt, we won and we won handily. Just not by as much."

"Go back six months, it was a three-way dogfight," Loomis said. "Who among us out there would have thought Jeremy Harris would've come within a hair of winning it all in September?"

But Seigle and Barbara Ankersmit of QMark Research and Polling, a division of Seigle's company, believe the tide has now turned tremendously in Morgado's favor.

"We're going to take advantage of the momentum we have and we do have it," Seigle said. "I'm confident it's going to be an extremely close election come November and it's going to be a very hard-fought campaign."

By virtue of succeeding in his goal of getting into a runoff with Harris, Morgado has become a legitimate candidate in the eyes of many voters who may have viewed him previously as a loser, Ankersmit said. That may include people who voted for Harris last Saturday, she said.

"I think it's a whole new race."

James Dannemiller of SMS Research, which has done polls for media organizations, went so far as to predict that most, if not all, of the votes that were left blank or went to Fasi will now go to Morgado.

"Harris is a lot less powerful than what he seemed during the course of the primary election," Dannemiller said. "He's flat even with the other guys. All of the rest of the votes go to Morgado."

Echoing Ankersmit's comment, Dannemiller said Harris may now be seen as a loser.

"He has to do something about that."

Dannemiller said anyone who assumes that votes that didn't go to Harris or Morgado in the primary will be evenly distributed in the general election "is a fool."

Clegg said Saturday's vote indicates that Harris has increased his base significantly since the 1994 runoff for mayor and that Morgado's base has slipped.