I have seen debate on whether ties in stars are actually ties. Some believe the vote is just too close to be separated by a tenth of a percent, while others think there are not enough votes counted for this to be possible.
Either way, there are bound to be some real ties at some points. But I set out to answer the question: how many votes are needed for a vote to be rounded to 50/50 without being a tie?
After testing several numbers around this area, I found that the lowest combination is a vote of 500 votes to 501 votes, out of 1,001 votes total. This leads to a percentage of 50.049 vs 49.951. Both of these numbers would be rounded to an even 50.0%.
In conclusion, I think there just may be that many votes sometimes, but probably not. The average charity has about 700 people betting on it. Now, this obviously does not include white levels and people who forgot to bet. However, many people bet regularly and may not necessarily pay any attention to stars.
I think it is highly unlikely that a tie has ever not really been a tie.
