‘I never doubted it’: why film-maker Michael Moore forecast ‘blue tsunami’ in midterms

In the lead-up to last week's midterm elections in America, the punditocracy of commentators, pollsters and political-types were almost united: a "red wave" of Republican gains was on the cards.

But one dissenting voice stood out: that of leftist filmmaker Michael Moore. Against all the commonplace predictions, he had forecast Democrats would do well. He called it a "blue tsunami".

That proved to be true in his home state of Michigan, where Democrats won governor, house and senate for the first time in 40 years, often by large margins. It's been more of a blue wall across the rest of the country, where Republican gains mostly failed to materialize, with the exception of Florida. But even so, the strong Democrat performance has stunned people on both sides of the US political divide, delighting the left and sparking hand-wringing on the right.

With the Democrats retaining power in the Senate, and a chance that even the House could remain in their control, suddenly Moore is looking like a prognosticator par excellence.

"I never doubted it - there was no way the Republicans were going to have some kind of landslide," Moore said in an interview.

But, he added: "I don't have any special powers, I'm not related to Nostradamus or Cassandra, but I was stunned once again that nobody was willing to stick their neck out. I was just trying to say that common sense, and data - and if you're not living in a bubble - should bring you to the same conclusion that there are more of us than them."

"We've won seven of the last eight elections in the popular vote, we've got more registered, we have a new crop of young people every year, plus the fact that 70% of eligible voters are either women, people of color, or 18 to 25 year olds, or a combination of the three," he said. "That's the Democratic party's base".