DUBLIN — Ireland re-elected its leftist president, Michael D. Higgins, to a second term and voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to remove a ban on blasphemy from the Constitution.

Mr. Higgins won easily, with about 56 percent of the vote, despite a late surge by a former reality show celebrity whose support soared after he criticized an ethnic minority group. In a separate ballot, about 65 percent of voters, or 951,650 people, chose to abolish a constitutional ban on blasphemy.

The vote was more symbolic than practical: No one has ever been prosecuted for blasphemy in modern Ireland, and in practice the ban had never led to a prosecution.

But rights groups said that the existence of the ban was used by repressive governments to argue in support of their own restrictions.