rating feature: possible to use for contests?

Good point. Would be nice to get the plain "total stars" count as well.

i.e. 2 votes: 1 vote with 3 stars, 1 vote with 4 stars = 7 stars (total)

BTW, is it possible to have Voting data in Section Statistics module? Since there is a Voting manager in backend, the information is already there. But not a summary.

Yes. It saves as average as total number of votes in $item->votes

Is it possible to get the total number of the actual "stars", too? I think, that number is used for the different rating methods... but is it still available and accessible in template?

Yes. There is _js_res_votes table with keeps who rated and how many stars.

To path it to template I have to add SQL query. To add SQL query I have to add parameter if you need variable in template that have array of votes.

I think things like this should be custom.

@sergey can you suggest (for non programmers) the code to use to call the total number of stars received by a record?

$item->votes - total number of votes

$item->votes_result - average vote in % based on 0%-100%