French conservative primaries race tightening, Juppe still ahead: poll

France's former prime minister Alain Juppe is fighting an increasingly tight race to win the conservatives' nomination for next year's presidential election, an Ifop-Fiducial poll for Sud Radio showed on Thursday. Juppe is seen getting 31 percent of votes in the first round of the primaries on Sunday, versus 30 percent for ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy and 27 percent for another former prime minister, Francois Fillon. The poll was carried out online Nov 10-17 with 744 people certain to vote in th