GALIVANTS FERRY - Many species are rare, even threatened, in the swampy marshes along the southeastern coast, and perhaps none is closer to extinction than the "yellow-dog" Democrat of the Old South.

For decades, straight-ticket, conservative white voters who displayed unyielding loyalty to the Democratic Party - they said they'd vote for a yellow dog if the Democrats ran one - transformed the South into a party stronghold.

The tide began to turn in the 1960s, when the Civil Rights Act alienated some lifelong conservative Democrats and Republican President Nixon courted yellow dogs with his "Southern Strategy." Since the presidential bid of Georgia's Jimmy Carter in 1976, no Democrat has carried the South and the region has become a Republican bastion.

"We are a vanishing breed," says Margaret Jackson, 67, of Manning, S.C., a rural area about 45 miles east of Columbia.

Some yellow-dog Democrats can still be found in the South, and they harbor hopes for a next generation as approval ratings for President Bush and the Republican-controlled Congress drop, even in the South.

An AP-Ipsos poll in May showed that Bush's job approval in the South had plunged to 35 percent and those polled favor Democrats' control of Congress over Republicans by 50 percent to 37 percent.

Jackson, a second-generation yellow dog and former Clarendon County treasurer, says her late father "always said we were much better off under Democrats."

Democrats have gathered every other year at the Galivants Ferry Stump, which is held at a stop along the tourists' route to Myrtle Beach, to celebrate old-fashioned stump campaigning since 1870.

With banjo music in the background, politicians shake hands, slap backs, give speeches and dig into chicken bog - a steamy mix of rice, sausage and chicken. Some springs it seems too hot to eat, but Democrats keep cool by rolling up their sleeves, slinging their seersucker jacket over one shoulder or downing gallons of sweet tea.

"I'd vote for a yellow dog before I'd vote for a Republican," says Wanda Todd, 61, of nearby Myrtle Beach. Like most of South Carolina, the glitzy Grand Strand now leans toward the GOP.

Todd says she has never voted for a Republican - "I'm too Southern for that."

Emory University political scientist Merle Black says straight-ticket, conservative white voters haven't been a force in the Democratic Party for years. "That's long gone," he said.

Black says 2004 exit polls show 18 percent of the voters described themselves as white, conservative Democrats or as white, liberal independents. At best, he said, less than 5 percent of Democratic voters would fit the traditional yellow-dog profile.

In the South, Arkansas and West Virginia are the only states to have two Democrats in the Senate as Republicans control most of the seats. Louisiana and Florida each have one senator from the two parties.

Jo Etta Chewning, 55, of Florence admits she voted for Richard Nixon and that was the last time she cast a ballot for a Republican. "You see how that turned out," she says with a laugh.

The type of ballot-splitting that helped Nixon, Reagan and both Bushes in the South is what gave rise to the "yellow dog" moniker in 1928. At the time, a Democratic Alabama lawmaker decided to support Republican Herbert Hoover for president instead of his party's nominee, Al Smith. The rank-breaking brought a backlash from those who said they'd vote for an ol' yellow dog - as long as it was a Democrat.

At the Galivants Ferry Stump, and other southern outposts, there are visions of a new breed.

In South Carolina, the party has started a Yellow Dog Club to raise badly needed money for 2006 elections. Yellow dog T-shirts and buttons were a hot item at a recent state Democratic convention.

The Yellow Dog Club is already popular in Mississippi. State Democratic Party executive director Keelan Sanders said members there are "black and white, male and female. It's not just limited to the stereotypical past definition of yellow-dog Democrats."

In Nashville, Judge John Brown conceded he voted for a Republican in a 1972 local race. While he doesn't describe himself as a conservative, he says he heels to the family tradition of voting Democrat.

"My daddy made a mistake voting Republican one time in 1948" in Thomas Dewey's presidential bid against Democrat Harry Truman, said Brown, 64. "My mother sent him to his grave never letting him forget he made that mistake one time."

That election year was a turning point for many yellow dogs as South Carolina's Strom Thurmond bolted from the Democratic Party to run as a Dixiecrat opposing Truman's civil rights policies. Thurmond switched to the GOP in 1964 while in the Senate but continued to win elections, thanks to ballot-splitting Democrats.

He doesn't split his ballot, but Brown said sometimes he passes over candidates who aren't to his liking. "I don't vote for Democrats just because they're Democrats," he said.

Lachlan McIntosh, executive director of the South Carolina Democratic Party, says today's yellow-dog Democrats aren't the same as those reared in the segregated South.

"The Republican Party certainly isn't the party of Lincoln today, and the Democratic Party isn't the party of (late Alabama Gov.) George Wallace," McIntosh said.