Presidential campaigns have most definitely gone very high-tech. The Obama campaign was run by some really smart guys (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harper_Reed) using lots of services on AWS. Check out their infrastructure diagram (heads-up its 60MB).
Ah, AWS/the cloud makes a lot of sense for a campaign. Of limited duration, and the more successful, the more it'll have bursts of traffic tied to events.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14405212/AWSOFA-Print-27...
Finally, here is a great tech talk video by the Obama for America tech team lead by CTO Harper Reed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1tJAT7ioEg