Identify adjectives in a sentence, excluding articles.

1. Identify the task: The goal is to select all adjectives in the given sentence, excluding articles (a, an, the).
2. Analyze the sentence: The sentence is: "The candidate led a strong campaign, but the race was still close when the polls closed."
3. Define adjective: An adjective is a word that describes or modifies a noun or pronoun.
4. Identify articles: The articles in the sentence are "The" (at the beginning) and "a" and "the" before "campaign" and "race" respectively. These should be excluded.
5. Examine words for adjective function:
- "candidate": noun
- "led": verb
- "strong": describes the noun "campaign". Therefore, "strong" is an adjective.
- "campaign": noun
- "but": conjunction
- "race": noun
- "was": verb
- "still": adverb (modifies "close")
- "close": describes the noun "race". Therefore, "close" is an adjective.
- "when": conjunction
- "polls": noun
- "closed": verb
6. List the identified adjectives: Based on the analysis, the adjectives are "strong" and "close".