The Election Won't Settle It. Plan Like It Won't.
In two weeks the country votes, and almost everyone is uneasy about it. The latest Economist/YouGov poll found nearly half of Americans describing the economy as poor, the highest share since 2022. Confidence in Congress sits at 17 percent. Worries about the election itself show up on both sides of the aisle. They are different worries, pointed in opposite directions, but the unease is shared.
We are not going to tell you how to vote, or who will win. That is not our business, and it does not change what follows. Whatever the result, the first week of November will settle who governs. It will not settle how uncertain things feel.
What the boardrooms are doing
The world's major advisory firms (PwC, McKinsey, Deloitte, EY and Bain among them) spend their days helping large organizations think about risk. On this election, they land in the same place.
Their guidance to leadership teams is consistent. Expect the vote to bring more direction, not more certainty. Plan for several outcomes instead of betting on one. Know where you are exposed, decide in advance what would make you act, and keep the ability to adjust as things change.
The broader numbers explain why. In McKinsey's surveys of executives, the share naming geopolitical conflict as a top risk climbed from about 59 percent in early 2025 to about 72 percent this spring, and it still ranks first this fall. Deloitte's CFO surveys show finance chiefs' confidence falling as geopolitical risk took over the agenda. Bain put it plainly this year: volatility is no longer a passing shock, it is the operating environment.
None of these firms is predicting disaster. They are doing something more useful. They are assuming that the next few months will contain surprises, and they are getting ready for a handful of them in advance.
This isn't fear. It's arithmetic.
Why it compounds
The World Economic Forum's Global Risks Report, built from more than 1,300 leaders worldwide, ranks misinformation second and societal polarization third among the most serious risks for 2026. Nearly 70 percent of those leaders expect a more fragmented world over the next decade.
What makes this moment different is not any single risk. It is how they feed each other. Economic strain sharpens political division. Division makes misinformation spread faster. Misinformation makes it harder to know what is actually happening on your street, in your town, on your commute home. That is the compounding pattern we wrote about in Start Here, and an election season concentrates it into a few weeks.
The gap at home
Here is the part that rarely makes the news. Large organizations plan for multiple scenarios as a matter of routine. Most households do not.
FEMA's most recent national household survey found that fewer than half of Americans had assembled or updated emergency supplies in the past year, and only about a third had made a household plan. The risks land on families just as they land on companies. The preparation mostly does not.
The good news is that closing that gap does not require much. It requires the same habit the boardrooms use: name a few realistic scenarios, and make sure you can handle each one.
Scenario planning for a household
You do not need a war room. You need three scenarios, sketched honestly, and a short answer for each.
Scenario one: a few unsettled days close to home. Large demonstrations, road closures, a run on the grocery store, or simply a stretch when you would rather stay put. Nothing dramatic, just inconvenient. The answer is a week of the basics at home: water, food you will actually eat, medications, light, power for phones and a radio, and a way to stay warm if the power goes out. This is exactly what our Stay Home Kit is built around.
Scenario two: stuck away from home. You are at work or across town when traffic locks up, transit stops, or a crowd blocks the route you normally take. The question is whether you could walk home, or wait it out, comfortably and safely. A small bag in the car or under your desk with water, a light, a layer, a little food, a phone charger, a paper map and comfortable socks changes that answer. That is the Get Home Bag.
Scenario three: noise on the line. Cell networks slow to a crawl when everyone is calling at once, and rumors travel faster than facts. Plan for an afternoon when your phone is not much help. Keep a battery or crank radio for official information. Agree on a family meeting point and a single out-of-town contact everyone checks in with. Write the important numbers on paper. Decide now which sources you trust, so you are not deciding in the moment.
If you want help matching a scenario to the right setup, Find Your Kit walks through it in a couple of minutes.
The quiet checklist
Most of this costs nothing. All of it can be done before November 3.
- Refill any prescriptions that will run low in the next month.
- Keep your car's tank above half.
- Keep some cash at home in small bills.
- Store at least a gallon of water per person per day, for several days.
- Charge every power bank and flashlight in the house, and check the batteries.
- Sign up for your county's emergency alerts.
- Pick a family meeting point and one out-of-town contact.
- Write key phone numbers on a card for each wallet.
- Know two routes home from work, one of them on foot.
- Choose your trusted news sources now, and plan to check them, not your feed, if things get confusing.
The point
Preparedness is not a political position. It is not a prediction, and it is not a bet against your neighbors. It is what serious organizations do as a matter of course, and what sensible households can do in an afternoon.