Not quite, it needs 51% of hashing power in order to be safely backwards compatible with non-upgraded nodes, however it's always safe with upgraded nodes. That's the reason BIP9 has a 95% activation threshold.
Note this is by far not the first soft fork Bitcoin has done. P2SH, CSV, and CLTV for example were also soft forked in. The original design even included 10 blank opcodes designed for soft forking in features.