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DUBLIN – Ireland's leftist president, Michael D. Higgins, easily won a second term on Saturday.
In a separate ballot, voters also appeared ready to abolish a constitutional ban on blasphemy. The vote count was still underway on Saturday night, but exit polls suggest that around 70 percent of reporters supported repealing the ban, which in practice had never led to a prosecution.
Mr. Higgins's re-election to the presidency, a major ceremonial position, was never really in doubt and won with 56 percent of the vote. But the gains made by Peter Casey, a panelist on Ireland's "Dragon's Den" reality show, drew considerable attention in the final days of the race.
Mr. Casey saw his support leap from 2 percent in opinion polls conducted two weeks ago to about 23 percent in the election itself. Voting closed on Friday, with the results announced on Saturday night.
Mr. Casey, 61, a businessman, commented on the release of a podcast interview in which he criticized the Irish Travelers' official status as an ethnic minority, recognized by Parliament last year.
The Travelers are a traditionally nomadic indigenous group. Ethnically Irish in origin, they are believed to have diverged from the general population many generations ago, developing their own variant of the Irish dialect and culture.
Mr. Casey had said that the travelers were "basically people camping in someone else's land" and that their separate ethnic status was nonsense. He also accused the travelers of failing to pay taxes and where they live.
"The Casey vote shows that Ireland, like any other Western country, is not immune from the populism we are seeing around the world," said Noel Whelan, a political analyst. "The tactic has been used in America and elsewhere, where you have a vulnerable element of society and accuses them of being ungrateful and causing social problems."
Mr. Casey was one of three panelists from the "Dragon's Den" to run in the election. Mr. Higgins, an academic, poet, and parliamentarian for the center-left Labor Party.
In the last presidential election, in 2011, Sean Gallagher, cam close to defeating Mr. Higgins. Mr. Gallagher, who is also a fund-raiser for the center-right Fianna Fail Party, finished third this time.
In an impassioned speech at Dublin Castle on Saturday night, Mr. Higgins said the voters had faced stark decisions about the "character of our Irishness."
"The people have made a choice to Irishness they want to be reflected at home and abroad," he said. "It is the making of hope they wish to share, rather than the experience of any exploitation of division or fear."
The results were a setback for Sinn Fein, the political training wing of the Irish Republican Army. The party ignored the longstanding convention against challenging presidential incumbents seeking second terms, putting forward a candidate to test its national strength.
Its candidate, Liadh ni Riada, finished with only 6 percent of the vote, significantly less than the party's 14 percent support in the most recent national survey.
The absence of any heavyweight challenger to Mr. Higgins was reflected in the turnout, which was down by a third from the 64.5 percent who came out this year for the referendum that abolished Ireland's constitutional ban on abortion.
The blasphemy vote was more symbolic than practical. No one has ever been prosecuted for blasphemy in modern Ireland, but rights groups argue that the existence of the latter is used in the context of their own restrictions.
In the lead-up to the vote, the Catholic Church weighed in to say that the Irish constitutional clause was "largely obsolete."
