Other forms: dead heats
When two runners cross the finish line at the same time, it’s called a tie or a dead heat — a race so close that no clear winner can be declared.
The phrase dead heat originated in horse racing, where it described a race too close to call, resulting in a tie. Today, it can refer to ties in any competition, like two chefs ending a cooking contest with identical scores or two basketball teams finishing a game with the same number of points. When an ongoing competition, such as a race for public office, is in a dead heat, the candidates are polling evenly among voters.