OK, I figured it pour reading about Orderby Parameters in WP_Query more carefully. I needed to set votes
to meta_key
and orderby
to meta_value_num
:
$args = array(
'post_type' => 'entry',
'meta_key' => 'votes',
'orderby' => 'meta_value_num',
'order' => 'DESC',
'posts_per_page' => 10,
'post_status' => 'publish'
);
$loop = new WP_Query($args);