I think it really depends on who you ask. I've never seen an end-all-be-all answer to this question, and I doubt I ever will. Each company takes their own approach to securing the browser, and even though the end result is almost always the same, their methods can be entirely different.
To answer your question about limited user? Absolutely, yes. Running as a limited user is the absolute best thing you can do to protect yourself (in my opinion, anyways). I am a well-learned computer user running Windows 7, and there has been a time or two where the UAC prompt pops up unexpectedly and I stop to see what it is that is asking for access1.
Having my users at work run as a limited user prevented AntiVirus 20102 from being installed (it still caused some issues I had to fix, but it didn't manage to install itself - that's the important part).
According to this article at Ars Technica, it's Google Chrome, when judged by hackers/exploiters:
A recent contest at CanSecWest, an
event that brings together some of the
most skilled experts in the security
community, has demonstrated that the
three most popular browser are
susceptible to security bugs despite
the vigilance and engineering prowess
of their creators. Firefox, Safari,
and Internet Explorer were all
exploited during the Pwn2Own competition that took place at the
conference. Google's Chrome browser,
however, was the only one left
standing—a victory that security
researchers attribute to its
innovative sandbox feature.
But then again, this article, also at Ars Technica, shows that Internet Explorer 8 is the most secure (it even has charts!):
During July 2009, a company called NSS Labs performed two separate browser
security tests, which Amy Barzdukas,
General Manager of Internet Explorer,
told Ars that Microsoft had sponsored.
Right off the bat, your suspicions
have probably been raised, and rightly
so. Internet Explorer 8 performed very
well in all the tests and, while
Microsoft insists that it had no
impact on the results, we must still
be cautious when examining the
reports.
Before we go to the results, it's
worth noting that NSS Labs chose to
test what it thinks are the most
important types of security threats:
The most common and impactful
'security threats' facing users today
are socially engineered malware and
phishing attacks. As such, they have
been the primary focus of our initial
research. While drive-by downloads and
click-jacking are also effective
attacks and have achieved notable
publicity, they represent a smaller
percentage of today's threats.
According to Microsoft, the malware
report is more important than the
phishing report, so we've put it
first. "We block 20 times more malware
per day than phishing sites in IE8,"
Barzdukas told Ars. IE8 block malware
for approximately 1 out of 40 users
every week, and approximately 1 of
every 200 downloads is blocked as
malicious.
1 I'm looking at you, Java Updater!
2 Check out Microsoft's Malware Protection Portal page on AntiVirus 2010 - it's impressive!