As I understand it, a lot of the infrastructure is contained in private companies (some non-profit, some not) closely associated with one of the two parties and

As I understand it, a lot of the infrastructure is contained in private companies (some non-profit, some not) closely associated with one of the two parties and available to all the campaigns associated with that party. For instance, the Democratic Party's contact databases are in NGP VAN's VoteBuilder or in Catalist, and campaigns in 2014 will both be using the information entered there in 2012 and updating the contact information for the next race. Much of the Democratic Party's institutional knowledge about voter contact and outreach lives at the non-profit Analyst Institute. The insights gained in the 2012 campaign will stay there instead of evaporating. The Republican Party has a little of this - there's the GOP Data Center, formerly Voter Vault - but they haven't been building infrastructure as aggressively as the Democratic Party, and it's costing them. In 2004 the GOP had a superior technical organization, but they seemed to rest on their laurels, and in 2008 they were slightly weaker. In 2012 they were totally lapped. They will do better by 2016 - thanks in part to the utter failure of ORCA - but the Democrats have built up a pretty healthy infrastructure lead that'll be hard to top.