>>> mylist = ["apple", "samsung", "toshiba", "Don’t know", "Can’t recall"]
>>> [item.replace('\xe2\x80\x99',"'") for item in mylist]
['apple', 'samsung', 'toshiba', "Don't know", "Can't recall"]
If all the items are already unicode:
>>> mylist = [u"apple", u"samsung", u"toshiba", u"Don’t know", u"Can’t recall"]
>>> [item.replace(u'’',u"'") for item in mylist]
[u'apple', u'samsung', u'toshiba', u"Don't know", u"Can't recall"]