After Spain's transport minister quits, a world leader leaving by year-end is a toss-up

Traders now see it as a toss-up whether any listed world leader permanently leaves office by the end of the year. Late Wednesday, bets that every leader on the list stays in place through year-end fell from likely to a toss-up, a sharp drop of the kind that follows real news.

The likely reason is the resignation of Spain's transport minister, Óscar Puente, who stepped down on Tuesday after a train crash on October 28 that killed 69 people, Reuters and El País report. His exit adds pressure on Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's government ahead of Spain's November 29 election. It did not remove Sánchez from office, however, and the resignation is a plausible contributor to the move rather than a proven cause. On Wednesday Sánchez said Carlos Cuerpo would temporarily take over the transport ministry.

The odds had been steady before that. Bets that every leader stays were close to even through late October, then rose sharply on October 27 and 28 and held in a range from comfortable to firm through Tuesday. On Wednesday they slipped in the early hours, dipped briefly in the morning, recovered, and then fell hard late in the day.

Across the wider question of who goes first, Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu is the likeliest individual to leave, though traders still call it unlikely. Bets on his exit have risen well above where they stood when this story began. France's Sébastien Lecornu remains a long shot. Sánchez trails Netanyahu.

Israel supplies another route to a departure. Neither Netanyahu's bloc nor the bloc of his rival Gadi Eisenkot won a majority in the October 27 election. On Tuesday opposition leaders agreed to recommend Eisenkot to President Isaac Herzog and to begin coalition talks, but no government deal has been reached.

The bar for any exit is high. A leader must permanently cease to hold office by December 31. An announced resignation, a scheduled departure after an election, a temporary transfer of power or continued caretaker service does not count. That matters in Spain, where an election defeat alone would not settle whether Sánchez had left office, particularly if he stayed on as caretaker.

Spain votes on November 29, and the parliamentary negotiations that follow will show whether Sánchez stays or a successor is installed before the year ends. In Israel, Herzog holds further consultations on Thursday, followed by what could be weeks of coalition bargaining.