DUBLIN — As an academic, poet, intellectual, committed socialist and famously pause-averse public speaker, Ireland’s president, Michael D. Higgins, is far from your typical crowd-pleasing candidate.

Yet as voting closed in Ireland’s presidential election last night he was expected to easily win a second term as Ireland’s head of state, taking as many as twice as many votes as the other five candidates combined.

Irish voters were also asked to decide whether to remove a constitutional clause banning blasphemy. Having recently approved far more divisive measures allowing same-sex marriage and abortion, they were expected to approve the proposal by a wide margin.

Although no one has ever been prosecuted for blasphemy in modern Ireland, rights groups like Amnesty International say the existence of the ban has been used by governments like those of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to argue in support of their own repressive regimes in various international forums.