Skidding, which occurs in rolling element bearings during shaft rotational acceleration, causes wear and incipient failure. This paper presents an analytical model to investigate skidding during rolling element bearing acceleration, taking account of the contact force and friction force between the rolling elements and the races and the cage, gravity, and the centrifugal force of the rolling elements. The Hertzian contact theory is applied to calculate the non-linear contact force. The Coulomb friction law is used to calculate the friction force. All forces above are included in force equilibrium equations to derive the non-linear governing equations of the bearing during acceleration, and are solved using a fourth-order Runge-Kutta algorithm with fixed time step. The proposed model is verified by comparison to other published results and with experimental results. The proposed model can be used to investigate skidding in rolling element bearings during acceleration and the transient motion behavior of rolling elements, and it will lay the theoretical foundations for eliminating skidding in rolling element bearings.