The vote of no confidence in David Willetts, the Minister for Universities and Science, has ended in a dead heat of 681 votes for each side, meaning that the motion will not be passed.

The total of 1362 votes means that 30.27% of Regents took part in the vote.

Some suspicions have been raised about the tied vote, which is very statistically unlikely. Bruce Beckles, a member of staff for the university computing services, feels that "there should be close scrutiny both of the actual count, and of the process.  It's been suggested that the serial numbers of the ballot papers should now be published so that people can check (if they had the foresight to record their serial number) whether or not their vote was recorded.  I think that is a good idea, although I imagine the University administration will be as helpful as it usually is in such matters.

"Obviously coincidences do happen, but since this is not only an unlikely result, but one that is the ideal outcome for the University administration (which didn't want either a strong vote in favour or against), I think there should be further scrutiny of the result."

The motion, which followed similar actions all over the country, was proposed by dons in response to the coalition government's higher education policy. The news of the grace's failure came just after the National Union of Students passed a similar vote.

In Oxford, members of the governing body gave a similar vote a near-unaninmous 283 votes to five.

Priya Gopal, a fellow in English at Churchill, said that the large difference between the Cambridge vote, which she called "numerically baffling", and the Oxford one may have been because "there was a false perception that this was an inappropriate use of the Grace mechanism.

"People were also told that if they actually used their democratic rights then these rights would be taken from them altogether. This deterred some people from participating at all. Another idea that gathered some currency was that Cambridge would be punished for criticising the goverment."

Jason Scott-Warren, an English fellow at Caius and a member of the Cambridge Academics Campaign for Higher Education, remained optimistic about the future of the movement against the policies of the Coalition government, saying that "The fact that fully 50% of the voters believe that current government policies are disastrous sends out a very strong message. The coalition needs to go back to the drawing board, and to offer something better than its current package of cuts, fees, and market forces."