This paper describes a methodology that was developed for the prediction of the critical flashover voltage of polluted insulators under sec and rain conditions least squares support vector machines (LS-SVM) optimization. The methodology uses as input variable characteristics of the insulator such as diameter, height, creepage distance, and the number of elements on a chain of insulators. The estimation of the flashover performance of polluted insulators is based on field experience and laboratory tests are invaluable as they significantly reduce the time and labour involved in insulator design and selection. The majority of the variables to be predicted are dependent upon several independent variables. The results from this work are useful to predict the contamination severity, critical flashover voltage as a function of contamination severity, arc length, and especially to predict the flashover voltage. The validity of the approach was examined by testing several insulators with different geometries. A comparison with the Grouping Multi-Duolateration Localization (GMDL) method proves the accuracy and goodness of LS-SVM. Moreover LS-SVMs give a good estimation of results which are validated by experimental tests.