OTTAWA - New Democrats in Ottawa are walking with an extra spring in their steps this week and it’s not just because of the big win last week by Rachel Notley’s Alberta NDP.

In the last week, two Ontario municipal politicians, including a mayor, have said goodbye to their Liberal Party of Canada membership cards and signed up to be candidates in this fall’s general election for Thomas Mulcair’s NDP.

Meanwhile, new polls out Wednesday suggest that those two municipal politicians could be part of a trend breaking Mulcair’s way, with “soft” Liberal supporters upset at Justin Trudeau’s party for backing the Conservatives’ controversial anti-terrorism legislation, C-51, taking a new look at the NDP.

“C-51 was the big one for me,” said John Fenik, the mayor of the eastern Ontario town of Perth, who had long been a card-carrying Liberal but this spring will seek to be the NDP candidate in the new-for-2015 riding of Lanark-Frontenac-Kingston.

“I was real red,” Fenik told me Wednesday. “I’m really proud of the work I did as a Liberal. But when I turned on the TV I just kept seeing Tom Mulcair talking about the issues that were important to me. Trudeau seems to be stuck in neutral.”

Insiders at NDP HQ in Ottawa say they’re seeing lots of new volunteers and support from Liberals-turned-NDP who share Fenik’s views.

Fenik, mind you, is under no illusions about his prospects should he win the NDP nomination. His riding has been held by Conservative Scott Reid since 2004 and is in a deep blue part of the province.

Meanwhile in Waterloo, Ont., three-term city councillor Diane Freeman came to much the same conclusion as Fenik. She, too, had been a long-time card-carrying Liberal.

“Some time ago I realized that I no longer see my values reflected in that party," Freeman told reporters at a press conference last week as she announced she’s now a New Democrat.

Freeman, a former past-president of the Professional Engineers of Ontario, has a strong resume and is the latest example that, for this election cycle at least, the NDP is attracting some top-tier candidates.( In B.C., for example, the NDP have two former provincial court judges running.)

She’ll win the nomination uncontested and, like Fenik, will face a Conservative incumbent, Peter Braid, but in a riding that is currently represented at Queen’s Park by a New Democrat.

The moves by Freeman and Fenik are encouraging enough for the NDP but then there was a couple of polls that excited them as well.

An Insights West poll of federal voting intentions in B.C. found the NDP on top there at 35% followed by the Tories at 29% and Liberals at 25%. And a weekly national political confidence index from Nanos Research has all three federal parties within spitting distance of each other though Nanos found Mulcair polled higher than Trudeau on “leadership qualities.”

With five months to go until election day, the NDP are still a long shot to win government — holding official opposition status would be a solid result — but if they pull off an October miracle, it just might be the pebbles that started rolling in the last week that will have caused that orange avalanche.