diff --git a/Lib/HTMLParser.py b/Lib/HTMLParser.py
--- a/Lib/HTMLParser.py
+++ b/Lib/HTMLParser.py
@@ -195,9 +195,9 @@
                     i = self.updatepos(i, k)
                     continue
                 else:
-                    if ";" in rawdata[i:]: #bail by consuming &#
-                        self.handle_data(rawdata[0:2])
-                        i = self.updatepos(i, 2)
+                    if ";" in rawdata[i:]:  # bail by consuming '&#'
+                        self.handle_data(rawdata[i:i+2])
+                        i = self.updatepos(i, i+2)
                     break
             elif startswith('&', i):
                 match = entityref.match(rawdata, i)
diff --git a/Lib/test/test_htmlparser.py b/Lib/test/test_htmlparser.py
--- a/Lib/test/test_htmlparser.py
+++ b/Lib/test/test_htmlparser.py
@@ -394,6 +394,12 @@
             ("data", "&#bad;"),
             ("endtag", "p"),
         ])
+        # add the [] as a workaround to avoid buffering
+        self._run_check(["<div>&#bad;</div>"], [
+            ("starttag", "div", []),
+            ("data", "&#bad;"),
+            ("endtag", "div"),
+        ])
 
     def test_unescape_function(self):
         parser = HTMLParser.HTMLParser()