While the implications of the election results were mired in uncertainty on Monday night, one thing was abundantly clear: this was not good news for Mario Monti. The outgoing technocrat prime minister, once dubbed "Super Mario" for his prowess at the European commission, was super no longer. His centrist alliance seemed all but certain to come a poor fourth – to a comedian.

"What a disaster for Monti. A huge communications failure," was the verdict of Bill Emmott, the journalist whose damning documentary about Italy called Girlfriend in a Coma has been touring Italy in recent weeks. The Twitter handle of his film succinctly remarked: "Monti in a Coma. What a waste." A day before, Emmott, a former editor of the Economist, had tweeted that the 69-year-old was the "only choice" for the country. Italians, it seemed, did not agree.

Battered by 13 months of the technocrat government's austerity measures, many voters had grown to loathe Monti for – as they saw it – turning the screw on them with tax hikes when they were already struggling in a recession. Others going to the polls said they recognised he had done a necessary and unenviable job of saving the country from financial disaster – but that it was now time for someone new.

Since Monti delighted the markets in December by announcing his intention to enter politics, he has undergone an unlikely image transformation from mild-mannered professor to sharp-tongued electoral candidate. He has lashed out at his rivals, deriding Silvio Berlusconi as a "pied piper" leading Italy to doom and exhorting the Democratic party leader Pier Luigi Bersani to dump his leftwing allies. He even, on one occasion, suffered the indignity of cuddling a puppy for the camera.

But with the memory of his reform agenda still fresh in their memories, Italian voters do not appear to have wanted more of the same. James Walston of the American University of Rome said the poor showing was partly down to the fact that, in abandoning his neutrality and entering the political sphere, Monti had lost his key strength. But it was also, he said, simply that alongside Beppe Grillo and Berlusconi, the dry, understated economist had found it difficult to shine in the campaign. "He messed up as a performer," said Walston. "He was surpassed by two master performers, and even by Bersani."