I have never encountered a similar situation before, and I cannot find relative documentation:

Suppose I have two tables. For simplicity, suppose that on one table (which is temporary) I have these columns: name, votes

And suppose that on the other table i have: name, total_votes, and other updated details (this table is a permanent up2date version of first table).

My aim is that for each name in table 1, I grab the relative "votes" value and inject it in Table 2 with the matching "name" column replacing the previous "total_votes' value...

How can I do it?

call your temp table t and your perm table p

update t,p set p.TotVotes=t.Votes where t.Name=p.Name;

you might even be able to do

update p set p.TotVotes=t.Votes join t using (Name);

<edit>

if you wanted to add votes to total votes then obviously replace "p.TotVotes=t.Votes" with "p.TotVotes=p.TotVotes+t.Votes"

</edit>