(CNN) Make no mistake: There is a clear path to the Democratic presidential nomination for Sen. Bernie Sanders. His strong fundraising numbers are just the latest sign that Sanders 2.0 has a better shot of succeeding than his first bid in 2016.

Sanders has reported raising $18.2 million in the first six weeks of his 2020 presidential campaign. He'll likely come in first or a close second place for money raised this quarter.

In 2016, Sanders took in $15 million during the first two months of his 2016 campaign and was a distant second to former Secretary of State and eventual Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in money raised.

Sanders' strong fundraising compared to 2016 is important because raising money is correlated with primary success . But money raised is not the only good sign that he's in a better position now.

A look at three other factors (endorsements, polling and media mentions) that I've identified as key indicators all point to Sanders being in a stronger position for 2020 than he was in 2016.

Sanders is holding his own in the endorsement primary

In some way, the 2016 primary was decided before it already started. Candidates who gobble up the vast amount of endorsement from elected officials usually win presidential primaries. Clinton was in a stronger position in the endorsement department than any non-incumbent candidate in modern history.

There is no favorite when it comes to elected official endorsements in 2020. According to FiveThirtyEight , no candidate has more than 2% of possible endorsements they're tracking.

For his part, Sanders doesn't have many endorsements. He does, however, have the same number of senators endorsing him than he had during his 2016 bid. (It took him nearly a year of campaigning to get that one endorsement.)

Sanders, of course, is an independent. It's unlikely that the party establishment will rally around him, unless he's clearly going be the nominee. A bigger question is whether they'll try and rally behind another candidate to stop him from winning the nomination. Perhaps they will. I wouldn't necessarily bet on it, though.

For one thing, it's not clear that the party establishment would want to risk alienating Sanders supporters.

And even if they want to stop Sanders, it's not clear they could. As FiveThirtyEight's Nate Silver has pointed out , parties can have a difficult time coordinating to get behind one candidate when there are a lot of candidates running. Republicans had this problem in 2016. With potentially 20 candidates in the race come the first debate, Democrats may face the same coordination problem in 2020.

This leaves open the possibility that someone with a solid base of support could win without the party being fully behind her or him.

Sanders looks solid in polling

The key to winning presidential nominations is to do well in the early contests. Clinton won three of the first four contests in 2016, and Sanders was well behind in all polling this early in his last bid.

In Iowa, New Hampshire and Nevada (the first three contests), Sanders is now neck-and-neck with former Vice President Joe Biden for first place in the mid-20s. The mid-20s may not seem very high, but it is significant with a large field. Jimmy Carter, Bob Dole, Ted Cruz and Rick Santorum all were the top vote getters in the Iowa caucuses with less than 30% of the vote.

Sanders isn't just ahead because of name recognition. He has plenty of voters who really like him. His very favorable rating in Iowa, for example, stood at 37% among likely Democratic caucuses voters in CNN's latest poll . For comparison, Cruz was able to win the 2016 Iowa Republican caucuses with a very favorable rating of 29%

If Sanders were to win in both Iowa and New Hampshire, he would join a limited group who won both in competitive primaries. Dating back to 1972, five of the six who did so went on to win their party's nomination.

Now it is true that these three early contests do not have a lot of black voters in them. African-Americans make up about 20% of all primary voters, and Sanders won less than 25% of them in the average primary contest with an exit poll in 2016. Not surprisingly, he got blown out in South Carolina, the fourth contest of the 2016 primary season.

But a look at the numbers suggests that those hoping black voters will deny Sanders the nomination in 2020 may be getting their hopes up. Sanders is holding his own with black voters. He's winning about 20% of them in a far more divided field than 2016 . Importantly, this is the about the same amount of support he is winning from Democratic voters overall. As FiveThirtyEight's Perry Bacon points out, there isn't a difference in Sanders' support by race.

Nor is there any sign that Sanders won't be able to corral more support when the field winnows. He is more voters' second choice than any other candidate, according to the latest CNN national poll . Both CNN and Monmouth University's latest polls put Sanders in first place by double digits, if Biden were not to run.

Sanders is getting his fair share of media

One of the big lessons from 2016 is that a candidate who receives a lot of free media can ride it to a primary victory . Sanders is not dominating the media landscape in anywhere near the same way as Donald Trump in 2016. He is, however, doing significantly better than he did early on in the 2016 process.

Clinton had many more newspaper mentions than Sanders from mid-2015 through mid-December 2015. In total, she scored three times as many mentions as Sanders did.

Over approximately the last month, it's been a very different story. Sanders has actually had more newspaper mentions than any other Democratic candidate in the race or likely to run.

On cable news, Sanders topped the leaderboard along with Beto O'Rourke for mentions after they announced their candidacies. Even in the past week (long after he announced his candidacy), Sanders has been in the top three in this department.

Now, whether Sanders can actually maintain his place in the media landscape is unknown.

The good news for him is that even if the free media drops off, Sanders will be able to buy a lot of media with all the money he's raised.