At 8 p.m. more than 20 students gathered in Virginia-Snider’s lounge to watch results come in for Super Tuesday, but one student had started even earlier.

Virginia-Snider resident Sam Smith came in at 6 p.m. to watch the early polling results and create a white board chart of the election results to tally who wins which state.

“I’m looking forward to knowing who the nominee will be and knowing the results would be nice going into November,” Smith, an engineering major with a side interest in politics, said.

And Smith isn’t the only one. Voter turnout for the primaries is expected to be the highest since the 2008 election and early primary voter turnout has almost doubled since last year in Texas. In a North Texas precinct, the Dallas County Republicans ran out of ballots due to the higher turn out.

But primary turn out wasn’t exactly on the minds for those attending the Virginia-Snider Super Tuesday Watch Party. Virginia-Snider residents, members of the Political Science Symposium and students chatted about the nature political ads, why votes were still coming in for Martin O’Malley and Ivanka Trump’s Instagram while waiting for results to come in.

The focus of the event was to help students become more interested in politics.

“It introduces politics in a safe, relaxed way by exposing students to different views,” said Terisha Kolencherry, president of the Political Science Symposium and Virginia-Snider Commons.

Even with the safe environment, participants had no issues against heckling Republican businessman Donald Trump and Republican Senator Ted Cruz as they gave their speeches following some of the results.

Despite the joking manner towards the candidates, students like Political Science Symposium Vice President Anton Nemirovski still want those just getting into politics to realize the importance of this election.

“People need to make sure they vote a lot depends on this election and there’s a wide array of candidates,” Nemirovki said.