I could not believe my eyes, but he was actually crying. The man, whom I had closely known for more than a decade, had been sitting alone for the past hour watching videos of Hosni Mubarak and his speeches in melancholy and, eventually, tearing up.

I had seen him on several occasions over the years watching the more famous speeches of former presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat on his decaying yet unchanging laptop, as quite a few do. But he always seemed to view Mubarak as nothing more than a placeholder rather than a successor to that lineage of (mostly) celebrated Egyptian leaders. What’s more, this is possibly the 10th day in a row he has done this before my eyes. His interest in politics as well has generally been nothing noteworthy over the years. And though he was not particularly supportive of the January revolution when it began, he had wholly joined the national euphoria and excitement that ensued in the few months after February 2011, like many had. He had come back then eventually to the conclusion that the revolution was a good and necessary thing, and that “Mubarak brought it upon himself” as he had said in his own words, and that “it didn’t have to be this way.” Today, however, he sees the loss of Mubarak as the worst thing to have ever happened to Egypt.

What’s even more troubling: He’s not alone.

And I would like to point out, before proceeding any further, that I am not speaking here about Mubarak’s actual base of existing dedicated supporters, whose actual estimates are hard to pinpoint. Rather, my focus is mainly on the wider set of people whose opinions were never fully aligned with one particular political group or direction all along: those who are likely to be swing voters.