Elections are not about the actual results, but about the interpretation of those results. It is about framing – 20% of the vote can be a win or a loss, depending on the previous result as well as the predictions in the last polls. The European elections are no exception and thus Monday was more important than Sunday.

On Sunday the results began to emerge, albeit in the form of exit polls, and on Monday politicians and pundits came out to try to shape the interpretation of those exit polls.

The powerful secretary general of the European commission, Martin Selmayr, used a well-planned Politico Europe event to sell his narrative, which was shared by many prominent pro-EU politicians. “The so-called populist wave, I think it was contained,” he said to a relieved and sympathetic audience. Taking it even a step further, and praising the higher turnout and a few carefully selected election results, he declared, “The real winner of this election is democracy.” If only.

True, the “populist wave” is contained. Populism per se didn’t win in the European elections, the populist radical right did. Left populism suffered big losses in its few remaining strongholds – La France Insoumise in France, Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain – while the idiosyncratic Five Star Movement lost too. While not all far-right parties won, overall the number of far-right MEPs increased significantly, mainly because a few populist radical right parties won (big) in big countries – notably Matteo Salvini’s League in Italy. In other words, populism is dead. Long live the far right!

The far right didn’t sweep the EU elections. Europe’s centre is holding | Natalie Nougayrède Read more

But the analysis that populism was contained is also wrong because it externalises “populism” to parties that are part of the nontraditional political groups in Brussels, most notably the three rightwing Eurosceptic groups. Together these three groups have roughly as many MEPs as the pro-EU liberal and green groups combined. But there are more subtle changes within the various groups, which show a partly different story.

First, the new rightwing populist group, the European Alliance of Peoples and Nations will not only be (much) bigger than its predecessor, the Europe of Nations and Freedom (ENF), it will also have a new biggest party. Since 1989 the Front National (now called National Rally) has dominated the European populist radical right, accounting for almost half of the ENF seats in the previous legislature. But Salvini’s League is bigger than Marine Le Pen’s party. Moreover, with neither Le Pen nor Salvini actually in the European parliament, the new group will have more footsoldiers, but fewer (if any) generals.

Play Video 1:23 France: far-right National Rally tops vote in EU elections - video

Second, populist parties, as well as parties that pander to nativist and populist audiences, increased their representation, and therefore power, within the various “mainstream” groups. Poland’s Law and Justice party (PiS) became the biggest political party within the “conservative” Eurosceptic European Conservatives and Reformists group, accounting for almost half of all MEPs. It has traditionally been dominated by the British Conservative party. And Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party, from the 13th biggest country in the EU, is the third biggest faction within the “centre-right” European People’s party. In fact, Fidesz was the only party to win a majority of its country’s seats in this year’s European elections, albeit not in truly democratic elections.

Third, the two traditional big groups, the European People’s party and the centre-left Socialists & Democrats, lost their majority in the parliament, and will need to depend on (shifting?) coalitions with the liberals and greens. But the old and new centrist groups do not differ only ideologically, but also geographically. Power rests solidly within the west among the liberals and greens, but much less so in the European People’s party and the centre-left Socialists & Democrats. This could be highly problematic when it comes to sociocultural issues, as the vastly different responses between east and west towards the so-called refugee crisis of 2015 demonstrated.

Fourth, while Selmayr and others celebrate the increased turnout, which is indeed good news, with barely half of the population voting in the 2019 European elections, democracy is hardly the big winner. And the argument that the increased turnout was because of the importance of the EU or the prominence of European issues is wishful thinking, given that the biggest increases in turnout were in countries with particularly polarised national politics (such as Austria, Hungary and Romania).

Rather than a victory for democracy, the European elections, and the responses to the results, show how much populism in general, and the populist radical right in particular, has become mainstreamed and normalised. We find it normal that a neo-Nazi party is the third biggest party in a member state, that a populist radical right wins more than half of the vote in non-democratic elections, and that the populist radical right is the biggest party in several EU member states. We celebrate that “the majority has voted for pro-European parties”. We ignore that turnout in one in five member states was (well) below one-third of eligible voters.

In the end, though, the question of whether we have reached peak populism is not up to the voters. It was the political elites that made the populist radical right the dominant force in the political debate, adopting its issues and its frames. If the liberal democratic politicians want to, they can make this the turning point in European politics. But for that they don’t need just the “containment” of populism, they also need a coherent and convincing liberal democratic vision. And there, the European elections did not provide much good news.

• Cas Mudde is a Guardian US columnist