France's Fillon found 'more convincing' than Juppe in final primary debate - poll

By Ingrid Melander and John Irish PARIS (Reuters) - Former French Prime Minister Francois Fillon was seen as the winner of a final debate with rival Alain Juppe before a vote on Sunday to determine the conservatives' candidate for next year's presidential election, an opinion poll showed on Thursday. The winner of Sunday's conservative primaries' vote will have a good chance of being elected president in May, considering the divisions on the left and opinion polls showing a majority of voters opposed to seeing the far-right in power. "Alain Juppe does not really want to change things. He's staying within the system, he just wants to improve it," Fillon said in the debate on Thursday. "My project is more radical." Fillon, 62, a social conservative who champions free-market economic policies, unexpectedly stormed to first place in the seven-strong primaries' first round last Sunday, with a strong lead on 71-year-old Juppe, who had been the favourite in opinion polls for months. Both are former prime ministers. In an online survey by Elabe pollsters of 908 people who watched Thursday's televised debate, 71 percent of conservative and centre-right voters found Fillon, an admirer of late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, hardly a popular figure in France, more convincing than Juppe. Fillon was also ahead among all viewers independent of their political stripe but by a smaller margin, with 57 percent versus 41 percent for Juppe. The pollsters did not provide a margin of error. Both propose supply-side economic strategy with cuts in public spending and raising the retirement age. They differ on other major issues, both on the economic and social fronts, with Fillon proposing more public-sector job cuts, which Juppe deems unrealistic, and a longer working week. "Reform should not be a punishment but bring hope," said Juppe, who is backed by France's two main centrist parties and is relatively popular among left-wing voters after campaigning on an inclusive, "happy identity" platform. During the debate, Juppe insisted on his attachment to France's diversity. "The French social model exists, I want to consolidate it," Juppe said, referring to the country's welfare safety net. "We should not break it." (Writing by Ingrid Melander; Editing by Peter Cooney)