PARIS, Dec 2 (AFP) - French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin would defeat Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy if the two conservatives went head-to-head in a presidential election today, according to a poll published Friday.

The actual election is due in 2007.

The survey, conducted by the CSA institute and published in the weekly magazine Marianne, suggested that Sarkozy could still take over from President Jacques Chirac if he pursued a strategy that saw Villepin knocked out before a head-on duel.

According to the survey, 46 percent of 971 French adults questioned said they would prefer to see Villepin win if he was competing against Sarkozy, who garnered 41 percent.

No margin of error was given for the survey, which was conducted November 23.

Polls in France regularly put Villepin and Sarkozy at the top of the list of likely candidates to vie for the presidency.

Both received a boost from the public for their handling of the three weeks of unrest in impoverished suburbs that shook the country in October and November, and Sarkozy, who is also head of the ruling conservative UMP party, is often cited as France's most popular politician.

The 50-year-old interior minister's boundless energy and embrace of US-style economic models and political style may have nettled Chirac, but his hardline stance on security and immigration has won him widespread appeal from a broad spectrum of the electorate.

Fifty-two-year-old Villepin, however, is widely seen as more presidential in his bearing and more moderate in his rhetoric. He is helped by the fact that, physically, he towers over the diminutive Sarkozy.

On the other hand, the prime minister suffers image-wise from never having been elected to office and is thus treated with disdain by many UMP members, especially those who have fought for parliamentary seats.

Unlike Sarkozy, he has not clearly expressed any presidential ambitions, though Chirac has blatantly groomed him as his chosen successor.

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