I wanted to see what kind of content a user would receive if he/she was 'feeling lucky' when adding a new tab in iGoogle with one of the 2008 Democratic presidential candidate names. So I added each candidate's name in the Add a new tab box and had Google automatically add stuff based on the tab name.

The best content seemed to be on the Barack Obama tab. That tab had the only political content of any of the candidate names used. John Edwards tab had the most iGoogle modules of any of the candidate names but none of them were political in nature, unless you count Jokes of the Day or Quotes of the Day as political. Chris Dodd's tab had 'Things to Ponder' as well as Moon Phases. Joe Biden's tab had Weather, Horoscopes or Youtube search. Surprisingly, Hillary Clinton's tab had no content at all. Other candidates with no content include: Mike Gravel, Dennis Kucinich and Bill Richardson.

Visual Results of the test:

Hillary Clinton
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2144/2099432109_8f16bf458d_o.png
Barack Obama
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2410/2100211502_93d8055810_o.png
John Edwards
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2203/2100211580_6b922ec1d9_o.png
Bill Richardson
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2241/2099432311_6c2fdbfaf3_o.png
Joe Biden
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2309/2100211776_d822465dbf_o.png
Chris Dodd
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2361/2100211842_32b7966078_o.png
Dennis Kucinich
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2003/2099432589_117abf699a_o.png
Mike Gravel
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2167/2100211920_9952761999_o.png

So does this mean there are more Barack Obama supporters using iGoogle?

[Fixed a small typo – Colin]

Why can't iGoogle at least deliver a Google News gadget customized to the name on those results where they otherwise don't find anything (like "hillary clinton")?

I just tried to add "Ron Paul" to see what would happen, and there were also some gadgets found. Including my Gmail inbox, and a weather gadget?!

Philipp, I like your idea of a default news gadget customized to the name on those results that don't find anything. There could also be a Youtube gadget that does the same thing. That would at least show some content to the user. Instead the user doesn't really 'feel lucky' any more when they get a blank page of no content.

And Google already has the technology to dynamically "know" when News results may be relevant – in the form of related search types suggestions on top of results:

http://blogoscoped.com/files/google-ron-paul-suggestions.png